Jack Ross got spiky with BBC reporter Brian McLaughlin when pushed for an answer on how his team have responded to their 7-0 thrashing in Alkmaar. And the Dundee United boss was left with more reason to be frustrated after they went behind with less than a minute on the clock against Hearts.
Ross watched his team fall to the joint-worst ever result for a Scottish side in Europe as they threw a one-goal lead from the first leg to crash out of the Europa Conference League. They were comprehensively taken apart by AZ and Ross was tasked with picking his players up for a trip to Tynecastle.
Ross was speaking on BBC Sportsound before the game, which saw his side fall behind after just 42 seconds to a Lawrence Shankland strike. He was asked by McLaughlin how his team had bounced back and said: "It's my job. It's other people who take it to the extremes, I suppose it's part of their jobs to do that but my job is to lead players and staff.
"That starts immediately after the final whistle on Thursday so every bit of my behaviour and actions they take a lead from. It meant when we report back for training we're ready to go today. I think any negativity of criticism you get it can either make you doubt yourself or it can make you motivated to put things right and I think that's what we have to do today."
McLaughlin then asked if Ross had sat down and gone over the game with his players, and the manager grew increasingly frustrated with the line of questioning. He said: "No it's done, Brian, I just said that. It's finished. We've got a game three days later, we can't affect anything that's gone before we can only affect what lies ahead of us and that's today's game, that's the one our focus and concentration has been on. I don't mean to be flippant on it, we always reflect and look back on what has gone in games before in trying to make things better. The energy has been focused on today's performance.
"I'm at the risk of repeating myself. We're five questions in and we've not spoken about today's game. I've answered the questions quite thoroughly I think in terms of my job as a manager is to lead by my actions and behaviours and that's what I did from the final whistle. I've done 300 games now as a manager, you get ups and downs.
"In the space of seven days we've had a really big high and then a really big low. But it wouldn't have mattered if we'd had two big highs. Todays game in isolation is the most important thing in our minds from immediately the game finishes on Thursday evening.
"Players are professional, you only get to being at this level in the game by being tough and resilient, irrespective of if people think they are. They're bruised, we all are. We win today and we're on the road to putting that right."
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