On whether the performance against Newcastle is as well as his team have played this season…

No, I think we played much better than that, to be honest. It was a good last hour. The first half-hour wasn’t as we wanted it to be. Again, for obvious reasons, because if you dive into data… the first half-hour, we didn’t play that much. There were a lot of set-pieces which took a lot of time. Then it’s difficult to find momentum and to find the same tempo and pace as we had in the last hour. I liked our last hour but for me it wasn’t our best. I think we’ve played many games of really good football.

Unfortunately, we were not always able to be that good in both boxes. Now in the last two games we’ve been really good in both boxes and then people start to notice that our football might be better as well. But that football part has always been for 95 per cent of the minutes we played, for me, far above an acceptable level. But both boxes have been not good enough throughout maybe 95 per cent of the time. Now in the last two games that was and then all of a sudden there’s not only the performance, but the result looks different as well.

On what he liked about the performance against Newcastle…

A combination of many things. I think off the ball we were really good. The third we scored came from a high press and a very good transition moment. We had a few very good transition moments. I see also individual performances that are getting better and better and better, because these players are getting fitter and fitter and fitter and are adjusting more and more towards Premier League, Champions League amount of games. We are going to a week where we have to, again, play three games in seven days, and not the most simple ones. It wasn’t as if we had a very easy FA Cup draw. So, three strong teams to face in seven days again. That is another challenge that we are facing this week.

On Florian Wirtz’s form…

I think it’s all, first and foremost, always credit to the player because he has to do the work not only on the pitch, also in the gym. And then as a manager, even if he is maybe physically struggling a little bit in the start, you need to keep on playing him because that’s the only way players can improve. He is an example of that where I had many of them this season. So, I think he did not even improve that much on the ball because from the start he was special on the ball.