After Emirates FA Cup disappointment at Manchester United on Wednesday, there’s no time to rest for Nuno Espirito Santo’s group, who head to Southampton in the Premier League on Saturday. Bennett didn’t feature at Old Trafford, but is confident the group are ready for another quick turnaround, can deal with Southampton’s threat and would welcome any fresh bodies into the camp.
On remaining fresh
“If we go and beat Southampton, people aren’t going to think about the amount of games we’ve played, we don’t look too much into that. The things we do and things we’ve done have stood us in good stead. The lads have got a lot of energy left.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position to enable us to play this amount of games across the leagues and cups, and we’re enjoying the ride we’ve put ourselves on and want to continue to do that.”
On Southampton’s turnaround
“They’ve done unbelievably. There was talk about their manager, but they’ve showed what can happen when you stick with the routine and the manager that they know, and is ultimately going to get the lads working, and they’ve done that.
“It’s a credit to them, you can’t take anything away from the players because they’ve bought into everything the manager’s tried to implement and they’ve carried on working hard. They’re getting the results for their effort on the training ground.
“Sometimes it’s nice to see a team do that, everyone’s quick to fire when things aren’t going great, I imagine their own fans were asking questions, but if you went today, you’d see a different atmosphere with fans who were saying different things two months ago, so credit to the players.”
On dealing with Ings
“He’s done unbelievable for them this year. For a club like that to have a talisman who has scored so many goals is massive. At the end of the day, having someone like that fires you up the league, if you took his goals away, things would be different.
“Credit to them, they brought him in and have got him working, and they’re progressing the way they want to progress. We know it’s going to be tough, we know he’s going to be a danger, but we put things in place to deal with that.”
On welcoming new faces into the group
“You look at it as a squad, last year I played a lot of games, this year not so many, but if the 11 players out on the pitch do well, that benefits me, my family and everything I do. We have to be there day in, day out, to get them ready for games in training, working as the opposition.
“Our job is to welcome those players and get them to where we want to be, hitting the ground running. Adding quality and adding players to that benefits the group, if you add quality to that, the rewards for all of us are big.”
