Mohamed El Assy: 'It's normal and fair that the fans are demanding'

'It's normal and fair that the fans are demanding. Healthy pressure is good to know if we're doing it right or wrong. When you win, you applaud and when you lose we understand the criticism,' explained UD Almería Managing Director Mohamed El Assy in a lengthy press conference. 

 

Firstly, he apologised for not having held a press conference, like other years, in the first days of September, but this was due to the delay in the closing of the summer transfer window following the transfer of César Montes to Russian football and because he wanted to have made known the new sponsoring partners. 'The contracts are being drawn up and next week, at the latest, we'll announce them,' he said. 

 

Not only Mr El Assy expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the UD Almería fans but also he apologised to them as he 'feels happy that they've increased in number and demand.'

'These fans have been growing with us, enjoying the good times and suffering through difficult ones. We come from our first failure and it hasn't been easy to face it. The team is in a period of adaptation to return to the place where we were,' he added.

 

'We haven't made many changes to the squad and we've brought in the head coach who already helped us to gain promotion and the one who currently has earned more promotions. Everything is fine,' Mohamed said regarding the squad creation after relegation. He also highlighted: 'We've got full confidence in this squad and this coaching staff, who are qualified to be able to achieve promotion.' 

 

In his opinion 'we've got two problems. The first one I told the players when they started this season was overconfidence. They cannot get into the idea of exuding it. The second is that we've got excellent quality and we think that we can change the reality of going from Primera to Segunda. We all know that this division isn't easier or more difficult, but another way of playing and we must adapt to it, no change to our liking.'

 

Whatever happens at the end of the campaign, Rubi will continue at UD Almería, which Mohamed El Assy announced clearly and emphatically: 'He works as if it were his first opportunity and we know that he's brought us success. We believe in him and I'm pretty sure it'll work out.' 

 

'We create many chances, we're among the first in Europe, but the percentage of conversion into a goal isn't even half of what's normal. Not scoring a single goal in the first half in 6 games is also not normal, despite having opportunities to do so. This does not reflect the good work Rubi is doing. It's also being said that our defence is very bad, but as a professional in this field I know all the defensive pairings and we have the best centre-backs there can be in the tier, the market and the opinion of all the head coaches say so,' he continued.

 

When asked about the salary cap, which has been greatly reduced, the UD Almería CEO stated: 'It'll change next week when we reveal the contracts of the new sponsoring partners to LaLiga. This summer we faced payments of more than €40m in the relegation season and it hasn't been easy at  all.'