Koeman not thinking about Barcelona, for now

With the Sky Sports crew spending the day today at Everton’s training facilities at USM Finch Farm, they spoke with manager Ronald Koeman earlier in the morning regarding his thoughts about a bid for England forward and former Evertonian Wayne Rooney, as well his own future at the club and links to Barcelona.

“It’s different now to what it was five or six years ago. When I was coaching in Holland my name was also linked to Barcelona. At the moment I’m not thinking about different clubs because I signed a contract with Everton.”

Like we had previously reported with the links to Barcelona, Koeman hasn’t definitively dismissed moving back to the Nou Camp as part of him will always belong there, and it definitely remains a goal for him to manage the club he starred for.

Koeman also spoke about his hatred of losing, and how that has engendered a winning mentality in him.

“I still have it. It’s the worst day if you lose the game. That’s the mentality you make for yourself and I think in my situation it’s completely natural, and that mentality I like to bring over to my players as you can’t be happy if you lose the game because then you haven’t done your best or maybe there wasn’t a good organization in the game. I hate to lose.

“The best feeling in football is winning the game because it’s such a nice life but you have to deal with disappointments as well.”

The manager hasn’t given up on a top four spot for the Blues this season, even though he admits it’s very unlikely.

“We know it’s really difficult but in football everything is possible. We’ve had good games against the big teams in the Premier League.

"We lost unluckily at home, our only defeat of the season at home, against Liverpool, we had a great win against City and a draw in the first match of the season against Tottenham, we won at home against Arsenal.

“We had really a poor game away against Chelsea and a draw at home to Man United. We’ve had good results against really strong teams and that gives everybody the confidence that we can get a good result this Sunday [away at Tottenham].”