Shota Arveladze, the Yellow & Blue boss addressed the media during the prematch press conference prior to his side’s Ligat Ha’Al Matchday 16 encounter on Monday evening, 21:00 at Teddy Stadium. The Georgian coach talked about finding the winning formula, Eyal Golasa’s status and of course tomorrow’s match against Beitar:

“I don’t think it’s about being nervous or not. It’s good pressure and competition plus points, good opponent and nice atmosphere. We also know that Beitar will be extra motivated against us and they will have the supporters behind them. Beitar plays attacking football and move forward, they don’t defend just to take a point but as the match continues they see how they can get the best result from the game. All of these elements indicate that it will be a good game as we enter the new year.”

Preparing for Beitar:

“Every game has its own special identity and we have some notes that we will look at before the game. The main point is that we know that Beitar can always bring extra motivation against us. We also know they took the first points from us this campaign. There are some special things we will let the boys know about before the game.”

Playing after Beer Sheva this Matchday:

“We know that we have to do our own job.”

Eyal Golasa’s status due to his daughter’s illness and missing training sessions:

“I want to wish him my best with his daughter and we have been in touch every day. We are worried just as he is, but things are looking better. He is back today and will train today. However, he will not start tomorrow and Oscar Scarione won’t be available as well.”

January transfers:

“We will work on it and we have to see how things will develop as the Club is in the middle of negotiating with players.”

Finding the winning formula:

“The supporters did a fantastic job especially when we played against Dundalk. So it’s not just about the training and the coach it’s everything combined together.”

Maccabi captain and veteran midfielder Gal Alberman was also on hand and spoke about the important clash against Beitar and who may be the favorite:

“Favorites are always looked at by the media and perhaps we were the past few years, but it’s been a tough place to play and a hard team for us to play against recently. We know we have to show our best against them in order to get a good result.”

Calmer schedule:

“We had a lot of matches and now we’ve had more time to train together and play together which helps bring new energies onto the pitch. We spoke about this before the Ashdod match and we hope that this will help us reach our expectations.”

Improving during training:

“I don’t want to go into too many details but I can tell you that when we have more training sessions we can work on things that we may have had issues with and we can really analyze them as well.”