Frank on Toney, Van den Berg and 'fantastic' Liverpool team
Brentford boss Thomas Frank has been speaking to the media before Sunday's Premier League game against Liverpool (kick-off 16:30 BST).
Here are the key lines from his news conference:
On whether Ivan Toney will be in the squad this weekend, Frank said: "Who knows? Let's see on Sunday what will happen. Ivan trained the whole week, he trained with a good attitude in every aspect. So he could be involved, he could not. He could be here after the 30th, he could not be here. Basically, everything is up in the air. I said the whole time, if he's here, I'm very happy. If he's not here I am happy on his behalf."
On signing Sepp van de Berg from Liverpool: "I think he is a great player with an even bigger potential. A good age for a young centre-back that played quite a significant amount of games in the Championship and in the Bundesliga. I heard the rumours about Leverkusen, if that is true, then I think it is a statement that players want to come to us over other top clubs and we know that we are interesting because we have a fantastic environment, we have a good team, good club and we are growing."
On his squad: "We need a strong squad. We saw last year that we had a lot of injuries, we were unlucky, some of it in the defensive side. We lost Zanka [Mathias Jorgensen], so we need another one. We always want to sign one depending on what we need. Can we get a player that can lift the bigger picture, the bigger level, plus have potential to grow? That's always the best and we managed to get that in Sepp."
On Rico Henry, who is recovering from long-term injury: "Rico is progressing very well and hopefully he'll be ready to join the squad soon. He's trained every session here with the full squad with no restrictions. He's so electric, so he catches the eye quite easily. I'm excited about it. I've been here close to eight years, and he is the only player who has been here the whole time, so it's quite emotional to see him coming back. I'm very pleased."
On Arne Slot and Liverpool: "We are going into a fantastic team, against a good manager. I followed his work with Feyenoord, of course seen his pre-season games, the Ipswich game and it looks good. He tried to add layers to the fantastic job [Jurgen] Klopp did. He inherited a fantastic team. The team that started against Ipswich is a fantastic team. I saw some awesome stats. At home, they are so frightening, I expect them to be an unbelievably difficult task. We know we have the capacity to go anywhere and try to win it. We will go there and try everything we can to win it."
Follow all of Friday's Premier League news conferences and the rest of the day's football news
