Sven confident of staying at City

Last updated : 25 April 2008 By Ben Collins

The City owner will attend the last home game of the season against Fulham on Saturday and will meet Sven for the first time since admitting last week he was disappointed with the team's performance over the second half of the season.

And Sven took it all in his stride in the post-match press conference for last week's 3-1 home win against Portsmouth.

Asked, "How confident are you that everything will be resolved to your satisfaction?", he interjected with a smile and a chuckle, "If I still have a job, you mean?"

"I'm not worried at all, absolutely not," Sven continued. "You can't go around in life and be worried about things like that. I think I'll be here next season."


This week Sven stressed that the planned talks
are more to do with taking the club forward rather than his future as City boss.


Although a poor run after Christmas saw City slip out of the top four towards mid-table, Sven feels his first year at Eastlands has been a success and the City fans showed they are fully behind the former England coach during the win over Portsmouth.

"It's always good to hear that and thank you very much to the fans, they were fantastic, just as they've been all season," he said.


"My opinion is if we look at the whole season I think we've done very good.


"I remember the last press conference before the first game in August and I got the question, 'what do you want to achieve, what's the target for the club?'


"We really didn't know because we took in so many players and mixed them together in a very short time.


"After a while people talked about (qualifying for) the Champions League, then the UEFA Cup and then heads were down because we weren't playing good football but now I think we're back.


"I don't think you can expect a rather young team - and a rather new team as well because many of the players had never played in the Premier League before - to play brilliant football every weekend and to compete with the four big ones," Sven added.


"I think we are more or less where we should be in the table. I know perfectly that we've not always been playing brilliant football. We've had some downs but I think that's normal.


"I think if you're 8th, 9th or 10th, it's a good result, and if you can reach Europe it's brilliant."

Sven now hopes to build on the foundations he has already laid at City, and the Blues have been linked Barcelona superstar Ronaldinho and CSKA Moscow's Brazilian forward Jo.

"In general if we are going to sign players for next season they must be world-class players," said Sven. "We have a very good team but if we want to go one step further we have to take in top-class players."