Kristjaan Speakman is confident the current crop of strikers we have can cut it at this level, but insists that we need to look at things with a broader view than just football as well as patience. Young lads moving to a foreign country where they don’t understand the language can be a problem, one that can only be solved with time.
BELIEF IN CURRENT SQUAD
"We've got a lot of belief in the players in the group. We've just got to get clarity and maybe we haven't been good enough in giving clarity around what our expectation of the players is. We signed a player around a year or so ago for example, and a lot of the feedback when we went to fan forums was that he hadn't done well enough. Well internally, we thought he'd already played more than we expected initially."
PATIENCE
"We've got to understand where they are in the career, where they are now and where we're trying to get them to. I understand now that we live in a world where we all want things instantly - that's obviously the ideal if players turn up, integrate and perform immediately."
PRIOR EXAMPLES
"Amad came and I don't think anyone would say he was in the team and was a superstar from day one, it took him a little bit of time for him to adapt. Ross Stewart, I think it's fair to say that it was probably around six months into his journey here [he began to play regularly].
RELOCATION
"Players aren't robots, you cannot take a human, move them and expect them to perform exactly the same, straight away, in a different environment. It's on us to try to create that environment for them and then it's up to them to step up. I've got faith in the boys to keep getting better, yeah. What level they can eventually get to will be decided by all those factors. If I had the magic answer to that then it's the Coca Cola secret, isn't it? We try to do the best we can with the information we've got, to make the best judgements and selections."
