He was absent from the post-game lap of honour, although Hatem Ben Arfa – who showed up in the stands to continue his recent habit of irritating the management – did make it on to the pitch.
Asked whether the mood would be brighter after the close season if the club recruit, he said: “It’s very difficult for me to say that because I have to take stock of today a little bit, all round really as a club."
Asked whether this meant he was questioning his own future, he said: “No, review the whole situation. We’ve got ourselves in a position here when we’ve put so much pressure on ourselves and our fans are not happy about that.
“How best can we deal with doing it? There’s no problem sweeping it under the carpet and saying that everything is hunky-dory, we’ve won today and it’s all good.
“We know there’s problems and I’m accepting that, we need to put it right. Probably the best way is to have the team that started this season.
“I said to the players ‘look, the most important thing today was the staff at the stadium and the training ground, that we got the win for them’. We wanted to get that in the bag.
“Even more important than that was our fans – we have let them down. Over the last six games we’ve not been as competitive, anywhere near as competitive as we should be for this club. When you’ve been on a run like that, you could there was still a certain nervousness in our team. You could sense it.
“It was only when the second goal went in that suddenly we started retaining the ball a little better and we looked comfortable to get a third goal. It made us very, very edgy and obviously the environment didn’t help.
“So I was really proud of the players. I can’t tell you now pleased I am that they responded to that challenge, because from a professional manager’s point of view, that was a tough game to play in.”
“You can’t do this job unless you’ve got a strength and resolve and there’s certain principles that you need as a manager and you have to stand by those. And in the last four or five weeks I’ve had to stand by some of the principles that I accept on the pitch and at the training ground and I’ve put them in place and I’ll stand by them.
“That’s why, in the end, I got a result today.”