FC St. Pauli

Jackson Irvine on…

...the draw against Gladbach: “It was one of our best performances of the season, and when you play that well, you want to win the game. Some of our best performances have not come with the points we deserve, which has probably been the story of most of the season. You don’t always get what you deserve, just look at Heidenheim against Leverkusen at the weekend. But it was the first time we’ve come from behind to take a point and there were a lot of things to be happy about. When you wake up on Monday and you’re still in 15^th place, that’s a good sign for the week. We’re moving in the right direction again with the way we’re playing.”

...the belief the team could ward off the defeat: “I think we’d felt like it was coming. Although there’s been lots of games where we’ve been behind and couldn’t find a way back, it felt like everyone believed we could do it – even at half-time when we spoke about it – and everyone came out really believing we could take something from the game. It was a deserved goal. We tried to go on and win it, but we can be happy with the point in the end.”

...the last six games: “Everybody understands the situation, of course. Every game is an opportunity to take something. There’s only three points for us in any situation, though, so we don’t want to put too much emphasis on any one game. We have to keep fighting for our lives in every game. Yesterday we showed how tough it is to play against us when we’re like that.”

...commentating on the Premier League game between Chelsea and Tottenham: “It all came very fast. I probably wasn’t expecting it to be how it ended up, but I think it went quite well. The feedback has mostly been positive. I was so tired after the 90 minutes as it’s an intense job. It was a great experience, though. It’s not something I’ve done before and I learned a lot. I’m grateful for the opportunity and hopefully I’ll get a chance to try it again.”

...the forthcoming visit to Kiel: “I hope it’s not like the last three games I’ve played in Kiel. It’s been chaos. Historically, it’s been an exciting, eventful game. In all of those games there have been situations where we’ve had to defend really well, and we’ve been lucky a couple of times as well. They’ll see it as a huge opportunity to pull themselves back into the mix going into the last few games. We have to expect both teams to be at the absolute maximum. In the home game they were a bit more conservative and tried to play in transition. Against Dortmund they were so strong in transition, but they can play both ways. They have a lot of quality and have shown they can score all types of goals. They’ll do their utmost to win the game, and we’ll have to be at our absolute maximum to take something from it.”

...Kiel’s attacking players Shuto Machino, Steven Skrzybski and Alexander Bernhardsson: “They have such good dynamic. They move very well together, and they’ve all got an eye for goal. For us a big part of the game will be to try and control their strengths, but we’ve been good at that, like we were yesterday against Gladbach and their top striker. We have to do it again in Kiel.”

Photos: FC St. Pauli/Witters