Francesco Guidolin sent a message of congratulations from his hospital bed after watching his Swansea City team win at Arsenal.
The Swans head coach kept on eye the game from under the care of a London respiratory specialist as he continues treatment for a lung infection.
But the Italian was well enough to call his assistant Curtis after the Swans had breathed new life into their fight to avoid relegation with a gutsy 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium.
Skipper Ashley Williams scored a rare goal – his 14th in eight years at the club – as a much altered starting team opened up what could prove a crucial six-point gap between themselves and the clubs in the Premier League drop zone.
“I haven’t spoken to Francesco yet, but he left a message on my phone saying how pleased he was, that he was delighted, and to say hello to everybody,” said Curtis.
“He has lung infection and he will stay in hospital for a couple of days, I think. He could travel back to Swansea on Friday, we will see.
“He has been struggling for a while. He has turned up for training, to be fair, and we picked the team together.
“We didn’t make changes for the sake of it. We are towards the bottom of the table and, apart from maybe Ashley Williams and Lukasz Fabianski, there’s nobody who is guaranteed a place.
“There was an element of looking ahead to Norwich, as well as Bournemouth and Aston Villa after that, because they are three massive games for us.
“And in Leon Britton’s case, we didn’t want to give him the workload of three games in a week.
“Arsenal kept coming and coming at us early on and we felt we had to change the formation to try to stem the flow. Sometimes it comes off for you, and thankfully this was one of those games.
“Some of the players who have not played that much grabbed their opportunity tonight and they have given the manager a problem.
“We have given ourselves a little reminder that we can still play good football. We are still a good footballing team. I think playing against Arsenal suits us because they play football against us.”
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger claimed his title-chasing team were unlucky to be beaten, although this was third successive defeat and their third in their last four home games against Swansea.
“I think it was a very unlucky defeat,” he said. “We created many chances, we were unlucky in our finishing.
“They had two shots on target and two goals. It’s a very disappointing result and the players are very down, but we must respond.”
