Slaven Bilic

But the job you are doing is a massive one.

It's quite common nowadays.

We had the situation that you just mentioned.

With Dimitri, it was a great season.

He enjoyed it.

He was brilliant on the pitch, off the pitch, in the dressing room.

Very, like, vocal in a good way, you know, having fun mixing with the British, English, French or whatever players.

And then in the second season, he was doing everything right on the pitch, in games and all that, but he just wanted to go.

He had some private problems.

And he wanted... At that moment, of course, I tried to persuade him to stay because he was our best player, very liked from the other players.

He was giving us that extra.

The club wanted him to stay.

I got that message from the board as well.

We were on the same wavelength, you know, and we wanted to improve, not to lose our best players.

And I...

I persuaded him, I spoke to him a few times and all that.

But when it came to the point that it started to damage actually the dressing room, when the players were coming to me and asking, what's going on?

We were already a little bit in the papers.

When it was starting to harm the team, then I had to react.

spoke with the board and unfortunately you have to do it you have to draw the line his situation was a bit specific you know it wasn't like john stone's situation when the player is 22 or 21 and you tell him come on john stay another year you're gonna still be young you know and then you're gonna move like everton did with him dimmy was was already 29 30 you know and then he also