Joey, you had no Paul Coutts last week. Is he back and available?
He hasn’t trained as yet. We’re hoping he’s alright tomorrow, he’s had a couple of injections that have hopefully settled it down but we’ll make a call on it in the morning.
He could be touch and go again but hopefully he feels OK in the morning and gives us the green light, but we’ve got a Tuesday game and a Saturday game, so we have just got to manage the group through this period.
As fit as he is, when you’re at his stage of his career, you’ve got to be careful about rushing players back quickly when it takes you a bit longer to recover as you get older.
Yeah, tell me about it. The powers of recovery (fade).
It’s just a case of sometimes you aggravate little things and it’s frustrating but you’ve got to trust mother nature and just allow your body that time to recover.
The injuries you’ve had that have come back in, particularly Lewis Gibson, is he holding up the way you want after a couple of games in quick succession?
Lewis did remarkably well to get 60-70 minutes in the Oxford game after missing a couple of games and he managed to get a lot longer against Barnsley. That is a testament to the work he has done in getting prepared.
He is a consummate professional and even in the aftermath of the recent games, on a Sunday he will make sure he goes down to the pool and he’s on top of the recovery and that allows him to get those minutes.
We have just got to manage him in between games to make sure he is available on matchday. He’s keen, he’s desperate to train and push hard and some of the lads like that can be their own worst enemy. You have to wrap them in cotton wool a bit.
But to be fair to Lewis, he’s come back in and brought a calmness to the backline every time he’s played for us and the signs of good players is how they affect the players in close proximity to them and I think Lewis in recent weeks has been a key component. Not just him, but he has been a key component in our backline establishing itself.
It’s probably a bit early to be talking to him about his future, but somebody like Harry Anderson who you are not going to see for a few weeks, are those conversations ongoing in terms of building the squad for next year for those who are either here on loan or out of contract?
We’ve got a few in that situation, Couttsy, Grant Ward. There are a few whose contracts are expiring, but we need to establish ourselves what division we’re going to be in. At that point, everybody can take a breath and then we can start to prioritise next season.
But at the moment, I think everybody – that’s players and staff – are all focused on the job at hand, which is making sure we get north of 50 points. At that point, I think everybody can start thinking about next season, but until we reach it, there is no point in us having conversations because you’re not sure what division you’re going to be in.
Motivation at this stage of the season, you’ve still got to get to that point. Is that what you are saying to the players, ‘Let’s get there and then we’ll see what we can do’?
Yeah, absolutely. For us, it’s a case of getting the job done. When we know the job’s done and we’ve secured our League One status for next season, then people can say ‘Well, am I going to be here or am I not going to be here?’
With the greatest respect to the lads we’re talking about, you sign a year or a two-year deal and you know when the endpoint is. It’s nice if it gets interacted with earlier and you don’t get into the dying embers of it, but also if you don’t know what division you’re in, it’s tough to have conversations because you’re saying ‘There’s option A if everything goes well, but we have to build in option B’.
I would rather just shelve those conversations, get the job done and we know where we’re going to be and then we can have sensible conversations about it.
I suppose the bit you have got to do before all that is making sure you know what your budget is and what you have got to offer anybody. Are those conversations ongoing with Wael and the chief exec?
I haven’t spoken about it, I’ll level with you. For me, the priority is finishing the season as strongly as we can. I want to try to get a top-10 finish; I think that will be a good sign of our progress after getting promoted by having a good season and getting in the top half.
And then we can start making plans for what next season looks like, but from our perspective, there is still a long way to go for us in this season and we are fighting against a team on Saturday who are desperate for points.
They need to get points on the board to protect their status and if you take your eye off the ball for a minute, as we found out in recent weeks, the teams at the bottom can cause upsets and problems.
I think there is a calmness in the building from the last couple of results, but we’re still only on 42 points and we’ve got to get a lot more points.
Speaking to the lads this morning, I said the key is we’ve got to finish as high as we can and win as many games as we can because we know how horrible the feeling of losing games is.
What are you expecting from Forest Green because they have played a certain style of football for quite a few years?
I have to be mindful here because every time I tell you something candidly about what I think, we get our a**** handed to us.
They have definitely picked up, as you would expect, he’s a class act, Dunc. He’s gone in with Tony Grant and the players have responded but it hasn’t quite materialised at this moment into a win or the points they would have been looking for, but their endeavour and their attitude, they are certainly competing.
Dunc will be wanting to get his first win, they will think we are a good opportunity to do that against, a kind of mid-table team as they’ll see it.
We have to be ruthless. From our perspective, we’ve still got our own ambitions and local bragging rights or whatever, but for us, finishing the season strongly and not tasting defeat – we’ve tasted a lot of them in recent months and we don’t want to again if we can help it.
Your playing days wouldn’t have coincided with Duncan’s. Was it very much watching him from the sidelines?
Oh yeah. I think he checked out before I got in that league, but he was the best player at Everton when I was growing up as a kid. I remember his goals against Manchester United and we didn’t have a fantastic team at the time, but Duncan was iconic for Everton fans and certainly my generation.
Afterwards, when I’ve met him in and around the club when we’ve played Everton or even with my dad, knowing we’re big Evertonians, he’s always been absolutely exemplary, a top-class fella.
I exchanged a few back-and-forths with him when he got the job. I haven’t since he took the job because now we’re competing against each other.
I don’t want to be a fanboy, but I don’t have many people I look up to and as a kid, Dunc was iconic and still with Evertonians, he’s so well regarded by the blue half of Merseyside for the job he did there.
I’ll have to put that to one side on Saturday so we can give them a good going over hopefully and take three points. It will be tough, but I don’t want Dunc’s first win to be against me either. I’ll have to park my admiration for him for 90 minutes on Saturday, that’s for sure.
Joey, Forest Green are having a difficult season but I remember the relegation season here that in the midst of the horrible time, you still mustered three or four really good performances in there and you gave one or two teams a punch on the nose. You will be wary of them in that regard.
Dangerous animal, they are fighting for their lives with everything they have got and the more it goes on, the more desperation is in there.
I know from our experience of a League One relegation, it wasn’t from people’s lack of motivation. I’m not sure what has gone on there with managers, but here there was some stuff in the ether. I’m not sure what has gone on, it was Ian Birchnall when we played them earlier in the season.
They are always a dangerous opponent because they have got their livelihoods at stake. Not only a relegation on their CV, but usually wages are decreased or contracts aren’t renewed and that backs people into a corner.
When people are backed into a corner, they are dangerous. We caused a few teams – I recall Shrewsbury and Accrington – problems, but for us there wasn’t enough of that.
Forest Green have got 11 games to go and the longer it goes without winning, the more demoralising that can be, so at this moment we are facing a very dangerous opponent because there are still enough points for them to do something about it.
All I can say from my experience is once that threshold is crossed and the league status is not sustainable, motivation in the building naturally drops and for Dunc, that can eat into your next season as we found out in League Two when we opened.
They are well aware and they don’t need me talking about it, but they have got a lot of points to catch up on and we’ve got to make sure it starts next week, not this week.
Obviously, they lost their manager before the start of the season, but a lot of people are pointing to the fact they lost key players to explain why they are where they are. They lost Ebou Adams, Kane Wilson and Nicky Cadden, but you lost arguably two of your most important players after promotion as well in Connor Taylor and Elliot Anderson. What do you think when you look at their situation and your situation?
I honestly believe the back end of last season has eaten into this season. Now, if Rob Edwards hadn’t have got the Watford job and stayed on, would they have done something about it?
I’ve got to be careful what I say, but they fell over the finish line last year. If you remember, we were thinking we could catch them to win the league and Exeter certainly came close. Exeter probably should have won it on the last day, I didn’t expect that result.
That coincided with losing a manager and losing Adams, Cadden and Wilson, they are big losses. They got off to a flier and beat us on the opening day of the season and I didn’t see this coming, they were good against us.
It’s going to be tough and there are two sides of the coin. Either they have a miraculous recovery and they use that as a springboard next year to stay in this division, or they have a miraculous recovery and they just miss out but they use that as a springboard to get promoted next season if they go down, or they have the hangover of relegation.
I think it’s so tough without being in the building or the training ground, but you can lose one player and it can throw you. It can be a falling out between two players that can throw your dressing room and what people forget is the ecosystem of a football team is so finely balanced.
It can be somebody getting a new contract that other people in the dressing room are p***** off at and the next minute your culture has gone. That’s why you have to respect your Klopps and your Guardiolas for maintaining the high standards over a long period; it’s truly remarkable what all the top coaches and managers do with all the egos and contracts and media attention.
Forest Green were the champion team last year, so to see them cut adrift at the bottom is a real surprise.
We’re still scrapping away, we’re far from safe, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve made a better start in League One than them, but after 46 games we need to make sure we’re sitting comfortably away from the relegation spots.
How’s Josh Coburn getting on because he had a bit of a knee issue and he’s having his first run at Rovers out of the team since he emerged? Are there lessons for Josh to learn?
It’s all about shape. We were playing front twos and now we’ve gone away from that. We’ve been a lot more 4-3-3 or 4-5-1, whichever way you want to view it, mainly to give ourselves a solid platform. That coincided with Josh having a little bit of a niggle.
Life is about timing, as you know. He’s coming back, he’s kind of getting beyond that now and he’s just waiting for an opportunity.
For a player of Josh’s size, throwing him on for ten minutes, by the time that ten minutes has gone he’s only just getting warm. He’s a big unit. He’ll no doubt make a big impact for us between now and the end of the season. He’s such a talented boy.
A first little spell out of the team, but that just gives him a bit of time to freshen up. If I am honest, if he doesn’t play another game for us, he has had a successful loan.
He’s our second top scorer and came here late in terms of the window, had an injury to overcome, and had a phenomenal spell when he first got in the team.
Now he’s having a bit of a different spell and I’m absolutely confident now between now and the end of the season, he will add another four or five goals to what he has already got.
You alluded to it there, but the level of pragmatism you brought in after the difficult run, you are not quite as open and you are a bit more rigid. Do you see yourself doing that until you know you’re safe now? You’ve compromised at one end of the pitch to make yourselves better at the other, but I imagine you want to be a bit more front-foot.
We’re building a new group and that’s the reality from January. You can’t run before you can walk and we got snotted a few times, there were a few bloody noses and we had to be a bit more pragmatic because we need to get points on the board and the only way to build confidence is results.
Performances are great and you can build confidence with good performances, but if you’re not getting the points, it can actually be detrimental if you play well and don’t get any points.
From our perspective, we had to strip it back to basics a bit and make sure we have a solid platform and we’re staying in games and if anybody creates anything or causes problems, they have to earn the right to do that.
On the flip side of that, we know we’ve got goals in the team and the front side of the team for is huge, but they are p****** in the wind, really if the back lads keep conceding two goals, which we were averaging.
You fix one problem and another one arises. That is why all managers have got grey hair and massive bags under their eyes.
For Josh Grant, it must be amazing for him to be back out doing a bit of work and feeling like a footballer again because it has been a horrible period for him in recent years.
Any player out there reading this will know, the worst thing is that gym, especially when it’s only you in there and you’re looking at the walls. Some of the high-tech places, if you’re lucky enough to go to places with a really good gym, they now build a glass window so you can look out onto the training pitch because they think that is aspirational for the injured players.
I’m not sure who came up with that, but when you’re in their sitting on the bike or doing another gym session and following a programme and you look out and see everybody prancing around with balls, it can be soul-destroying, especially if the sun’s out. When the sun’s cracking flags and the pitches are good and you hear that noise, it can be so demoralising and it can depress you.
Josh has had to put up with a lot of that in his career and he is only a young man. He’s had drastic operations to get to the root of his problems and we’ve got to be careful building him back up, but it must be such a nice feeling to be back out on the grass.
You take it for granted when you’re fit, but when you’ve had a tough time with niggles and injuries and you’re in the gym, pfff. When you get out of it, it’s truly amazing.
I’ve been watching Clarkson’s Farm and there was a bovine TB outbreak so they had to lock all the cows in and after a period they let them back out and the cows are all bucking. It’s because they haven’t been on the grass and players are the same, not getting bovine TB, but when they get back from injuries you see it in them.
They are doing stuff that they don’t usually enjoy when you ask them to do it when they are fully fit, but because the novelty of just being out on the grass with the ball is lost sometimes when you’re in the gym.
You can see in Josh, you can just see his mood has elevated because he’s back out there and hopefully that’s the last of his injuries because he’s a talented boy and it’s stopped his career from progressing, that’s for sure.
You’re not looking at a game or two for him this season, are you? You’re thinking pre-season?
We’ll see. We can’t really pencil any of those boys in because they can have setbacks as we found with Jordan Rossiter. We were expecting Jordy to come back and he’s had multiple setbacks.
We’ve got everything crossed for Josh and it would be lovely to see him (play), but if it means he just gets a free run at pre-season and he gets a period of football next year consistently, it will be worthwhile for him because he’s still only 24 and he’s such a talented player that it is frustrating to see him injured as much as he is and it must be incredibly frustrating for him and his family.
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