Joey, how big a test will Crawley be on Tuesday?
They will be tough. John (Yems) has got them on a good run and we know a few of their players. They were a tough game even though we won the game at our place in the early part of the season, so I know it will be a tough test.
Every fixture for us now, probably until we get to Scunthorpe on the last day of the season – they’ll be in a different frame of mind, either way if they are staying up or going down – everybody else has got something to play for so we need to turn up and make sure we give game the respect it deserves and give the best account of ourselves that we possibly can.
On Saturday, we weren’t good enough and we didn’t get rewarded.
You haven’t suffered back-to-back defeats since September. Does that fill you with confidence that the players are good at responding to any setbacks they have?
We’re not thinking about that at the minute, we’re thinking about winning every game. That’s the mindset we’re coming in with. We’ve played everybody at least once, so we’re coming to win every game we play.
Luca Hoole might have picked up a nice little point for us on Saturday, but we’re going to have to win games to get promoted. We didn’t manage to do enough to do that on Saturday and we’re back to base now and Crawley will be a tough fixture.
Crawley will be a difficult game for us on Tuesday night. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve got to get ourselves right back on the horse.
Good to see Trevor Clarke on the bench. Could he have a good role to play between now and the end of the season?
It’s going to be tough. It’s tough to get up to speed with 12 games to go, but the fixture list will present opportunities so they’ve just got to stay with it.The main body of our team has started to bed in now and, unfortunately, if you haven’t managed to get yourself in that, every game is so important to us that we can’t afford for people to be getting fit on the job.
If Trev’s right and ready, we’ll utilise him and it’s nice to have the option of him back, but he’s certainly got work to do in order to get back in the team and become a starter.
Leon Clarke was not involved on Saturday, was that just a victim of there being lots of competition for the 18?
No, he just felt his groin after the Barrow game. We pushed him into the back end of that game and he felt a bit of a reaction in his groin at half time.
We’re hoping it’s only a couple of days rather than weeks, but we’ll be governed by the medical people there.
Crawley are wildly inconsistent at home. I guess you view that as an opportunity to go in and implement you game plan and the control that has underpinned your game of late?
No, we’ve just got to go and play a lot better than we did in the first period on Saturday.
We’ve been markedly improved in recent weeks at starting games and getting goals and in the ascendancy. On Saturday, we were a bit flat and we got into them at half time and if we start flat at Crawley, we’ll have a tough night.
We’ve got to be right, we’ve got to start correctly and hopefully the lads will respond in the right manner on Tuesday evening.
With what you said about Trevor Clarke in mind, is there a sense that time might be running out for Alfie Kilgour and Josh Grant to make an impact in the rest of the season?
Alf’s going to be out for pretty much the season. He gone back in on his knee and there was a bit of floating cartilage in there that he had to get tidied up. He’s going to be out for between 6-12 weeks.
Hopefully, he’s finally got to the bottom of it. We kept him going and he played 90 minutes in the Hartlepool game, albeit he had a funny a turn and his knee didn’t settle down.
He went to see a specialist, did a bit of rehabilitation, came back to training running and it didn’t settle down.
He’s eventually required a bit of keyhole surgery, which seems to have got to the bottom of it, but there is a procedure you have to follow in your return to play. Hopefully, it’s sooner and he can be involved because he’s a top kid, he’s a Gashead and he’s disappointed at the minute, as is Josh Grant.
But Josh is no nearer to completing the return from injury, either. That’s rumbling on in the background, a little problem in his knee this time and he’s trying to get that settled.
Hopefully, we can get them back involved, but at this moment in time, certainly with Alfie, it’s not been great news.
But you must be confident with the depths of resources that you do have that you have players who can seize the challenge?
I am, but also the team is bedding in now so it’s becoming more familiar. With seven or eight players, you probably know where we’re going to go in terms of starting XI, such has been the way they’ve played and earned the jersey.
It’s up to the rest. Sometimes in these fixture congestion periods you do shuffle the deck a bit because bodies start to creak and so on and so forth, and I think it’s wise to do so.
I think we’ve still got another couple of weeks of Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, so we must keep grinding to get through that period. After that, when you get into a more spaced out (schedule) I think we’ll start to see what we consider our strongest XI on the pitch more often because the games at that point when you get into the last five or six games start to become really high stakes, so we want a settled side that knows what it’s doing.
We’ve benefitted from that in recent weeks, but if we’re going to be successful we do know, due to the nature of the league and the fixture list, that it’s going to be a real squad effort.
We were disappointed on Saturday, but we’ll get back on the horse and back after it on Tuesday.
SIGN UP: For our newsletter to receive more exclusive Bristol Rovers content
