Revealed: What Slaven Bilic really thought when Dimitri Payet lined up his free kick against Manchester United

Slaven Bilic18 March 2016

Dimitri Payet’s free-kick against Manchester United was one of the best I have seen.

Does he spend a lot of time practising them? I wouldn’t say he does it in every training session but yes, he does practise his free-kicks.

Without practising them, he would have no chance.

On Sunday I was expecting him to shoot but as Dimitri lined it up I was thinking that it was a bit far out and David de Gea is in goal — one of the best. I said to myself, ‘this has to be a great one’ —– and it was. It was one of the best but to be fair, I am not objective.

It was the FA Cup quarter final, a packed Old Trafford, 0-0 — so all those ingredients go to make it more special. I thought we should have won the game but I don’t blame the referee.

The assistant should have seen the foul on our goalkeeper Darren Randolph but I wasn’t fuming.

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CHALLENGE FOR CHELSEA

We have to wait a little while before our FA Cup quarter-final replay against Manchester United.

Perhaps we would have wanted to play it sooner and they could have Wayne Rooney back by then but I understand the schedule is tight. Someone said to me this week that if we do get through to play Everton, we would definitely need to score two because Romelu Lukaku always scores against West Ham.

All I can say now is I would love to be in that situation where we are playing Everton at Wembley in the semi-final but don’t let’s get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s first try to play well against Chelsea tomorrow.

Their season is not over. They are Chelsea, they are a big club, and their players will fight to stay there. They have to prove something to the manager, the board — and themselves.

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