PUBLISHED
19:30 6th April 2013
by Will Jago
Gus Poyet has challenged his side to secure three wins from the final five games of the season following Albion’s 1-1 draw against Leicester City – the Seagulls’ third draw in a week.
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Despite their 17th draw of the season Poyet’s side remain in the play-off positions, two points ahead of the Foxes and Bolton Wanderers, and he felt that another three wins should be enough for a top-six finish.
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Poyet told seagulls.co.uk, “We need to win. If we can win three from our last five I think that will be a good number. That will mean that the teams behind us will need to win four, and we have a good goal difference as well. It’s all in our hands so we cannot blame anyone if we don’t finish sixth.
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“We were always in the game today and it was always going to be very tight. The problem was not today, the problem was on Tuesday and last Saturday. At the moment it’s still in our hands.
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“We left it late to score but we deserved the point, no doubt. There was one team trying to really attack and get into the other half, and we had a very good chance before they scored.
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“Today was a poor first half from the standard that I was expecting from this game and there was nothing to get the fans up for it. We threw everything at it during the second half though when there was a little more space but they scored from a throw-in.
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“This race for the play-offs will go to the last game. We have plenty of games to come and everyone that’s involved have got to play each other so it will be close.
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“Everybody is giving each other chances but it’s still in our hands and it’s up to us to make more points than Leicester and Bolton.”
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The Albion boss was forced to withdraw Will Buckley inside 15 minutes while Poyet was cautious about the fitness of Kazenga LuaLua at the end of the game, and he fears that an irregular training pattern could still affect his players before the end of the season.
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“We lost Bucca early so we had to change him and we nearly lost Kazenga - that is why he was not starting today.
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“Vicente is also a player who takes time to recover and we thought it would be best to have him at the end when it opens up. So many things happened though.
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“We need to wait and see what’s going to happen with Buckley and Kazenga but it’s not a coincidence; there have been a lot of studies about this sort of thing.
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“If we can train and play on the same sort of surface, with the same weather, that will help. We have had to train on really wet ground one day, the next morning it’s frozen then the next morning we are on the Amex pitch which is completely different - the players pay the price.
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“Until we get to the training ground where we have two pitches similar to the Amex pitch I think it will be difficult for us.”
Original article