There are a few big challenges you have when you travel to a tournament like this. We had the game against Plymouth on Saturday and the same night we travelled over here to Abu Dhabi where there is a four-hour time difference and a completely different climate. We went from winter to…well, winter here but a completely different temperature to England.So you need to find the right balance for the players to rest but at the same time adjust and then be ready to perform, and I think we did that.When we planned the trip the one thing obviously we didn't plan for is to not have the manager with us. Unfortunately, when the situation happened we knew Thomas would have to follow the guidelines and isolate and we would rely on all the coaching staff and thanks to modern technology, stay in touch with Thomas.

He was involved in every planning detail before we came and he's involved every day now. They have the video calls and he can even run the team meetings before the games.There is the four-hour time difference but as soon as they can each day, Arno, Zsolt, Benny and Anthony speak with Thomas and they prepare together the meetings for the players and the training load. There is the direct contact between the coaches and the players here so they can see if the players are tired or not and it's been working really well.We try to keep it as normal as possible. Arno, Zsolt and Anthony take charge of the game and Thomas trusts them and they know exactly how he operates, so in this case it is very easy.It is hard for Thomas of course as when you are in the stadium for real you feel the atmosphere, you can gauge the feeling of the players and you feel the energy and see the emotions. When you watch on the TV, you don't have that but at the same time, you see different things than you see from the bench.

If the tests and guidelines allow Thomas to come for the final we will be happy to hear him here so let's keep the fingers crossed and hopefully he will make it as well.

The programme

We just make sure we do what we worked out is the best in terms of the preparation for the players, and the medical team and the physios are important in the way players adjust and can perform.

In the first two days the players tried to find their feet and then we had a very difficult game in the semi-final. We did well, we managed to do this step, we managed to get into the final.

We have great training facilities where it is easy to keep in the bubble and the pitches are only five minutes’ walk from the hotel so we have found the ideal conditions.

The stadium we are playing in reminds me of the Mestalla in Valencia but a little smaller. It is very vertical and is a real proper football stadium and that creates a very good atmosphere. There are limits on the crowd size due to Covid but it's nice to have 20,000 supporters there and we could hear the Chelsea fans. They were in the minority for the semi-final but there were quite a lot of Chelsea flags and it was so nice to hear the fans.

We were able to congratulate Edou Mendy when he joined up with us on Wednesday. When he went to the tournament in Africa, we all hoped he would come back with the trophy and it was nice to see him back with a smile on his face and a historic first-ever trophy for Senegal in the Africa Cup of Nations.He comes here bringing some positive energy with him and hopefully with that positive energy and having won our semi-final, we can carry on and end up with the trophy which we haven't won in the history of the club. To be able to complete all the trophies for the football club would be amazing and everybody was working hard last year and this year to be in this position.

With Chelsea playing a Brazilian side in the final, it brings back some memories of when I played in it in 2012 although it was cold in Japan.We played a team which was not better than us and we didn't take our chances. We ended up with one unlucky situation, a deflection in front of the goal and losing 1-0, but in the big games you need to take your chances. We didn’t do it 10 years ago so hopefully it is something we can do in our next game.We are very happy we made the first step, now we need to make the final step.