JOSE GOMES spoke after Reading’s final Championship game of the season which finished in a 0-0 draw against Birmingham City.
The Royals finished their league campaign in 20th position for the second consecutive season as Jose Gomes helped to steer the club away from relegation since arriving at the Madejski Stadium in December.
On today’s game…
I think for the way we controlled the game with the ball and the situations we create the players and fans deserved more than one point. It was a good football game in my opinion with two different styles.
It was a nice football party with three young players starting the game. Teddy played for the first time and O’Shea finished his career so there were a lot of emotion.
On John O’Shea…
It means a lot the respect that he got. He’s conquered the respect, he’s a very intelligent person, a quiet person who doesn’t speak much but when he does everyone listen. He’s a footballer who has won everything, he’s had a fantastic career and he deserves it.
It was the players idea (the guard of honour) and it shows that all of them respect him a lot.
It will be the clubs decision (if he stays as a coach) and I think this kind of player you can’t find easily, he’s won everything and worked with top managers. He’s very intelligent and has done coaching courses so hes ready to start, its intelligent if we can use him, I don’t know if he will accept our conditions or not but we should use him.
On the future…
We have good young players with talent and we must help them to grow, we know they are not completely ready, they need to keep improving but they did very well.
On the front three of Barrett, Olise and Loader…
They did good things, some fantastic decisions and some where they should have done better but it’s part of their growth as footballers and we must be patient with them.
Portugal Day…
It was really emotional when I first received the news and I wasn’t expecting to see so many Portugal flags in the stand. It was a big responsibility that they put on my shoulders but the level of this emotion and intention of the fans, the players answered with good football and we just needed to score and we deserved to.
Achievements this season…
I would like to repeat that the achievement, although we didn’t win anything but considering the situation when I arrived it’s a really great thing to achieve. It’s a result of teamwork from everybody.
We’ve got a big number of points at home, these points have been from the help of our fans so it’s their achievement as well.
On summer transfers…
We have players that have finished their contracts, we have loan players that have finished and we don’t know if their clubs accept if they can return or not and we have players under contract but we must find a way to resolve their problem if they can’t go on with us anymore.
This is the reality. Tomorrow we will put everything on the table and make decisions will talk with all the players because they deserve respect but this is football.
They know that we need to make money, reduce the budget and even if they aren’t happy with the decisions they will understand.
I have a clear picture of which players we must move on and which players we should bring if we can. It’s step by step, first we must move the players and find space to bring in our targets. I already know which players I would like to bring.
