You don't become a bad team with one performance, but I cannot overestimate the disappointment we are all feeling.' One of his leading lieutenants, Richard Hill, also tried to keep things in perspective, belittling the significance of the result, while reiterating the degree of disappointment.
You cannot overestimate the impact of a joyful performance on your audience.
He will say: "You cannot overestimate the transformative nature of this kind of investment".
"You cannot overestimate the importance of a job to our people".
"You cannot overestimate his influence with this team and this franchise".
The nationalities he now manages include Croatians, a Honduran and a Russian as well as Englishmen such as Ledley King, whose worth he cannot overestimate, despite his injuries.
He claims you cannot overestimate the significance of the Radio 1 playlist meeting, at which it is decided which songs will make it on to the airwaves.
"You cannot overestimate how much of an effect on tourism Ferrante is having – there are pizzerias making Ferrante pizzas," said Daniela Petracco, head of the UK arm of Europa, the small publishing house that discovered the author.
"I cannot overestimate," he said, "the effect on me at the time of coming into this drab city of Adolphe Valette, full of the French impressionists, aware of everything that was going on in Paris".
"The average secondary school enrolment is slightly under 5% (in north-eastern Nigeria), so I think it's easy to understand that you cannot overestimate what the consequences of this could be, given the parlous state of education in the region and the fact that, clearly, whoever is orchestrating this is focused on targeting schools, educational institutions," he said.
