Joey, you go into this game with some nice momentum to keep that unbeaten run going. Does that give you all a lot of confidence ahead of another long journey?
Yeah, tough journey to Sutton on Saturday and Oldham on Tuesday, but it’s what you’ve got to do if you want to be successful.
We built the squad with a depth to it. We never envisaged it would come as thick and fast to us they’ve come at us, but we had a little bit over the Christmas period where the games were stopped.
We knew at some point there would be a relentless Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday.
Now for us, we’re in a good vein of form, we’re confident and we’ve got some players to come back from today – Sam Finley, Ryan Loft, Leon Clarke to name but a few – so we see every game as an opportunity.
Oldham are fighting for their survival in the division so we know we know we’re going to have to be the best version of ourselves to take points from that game.
Three months of the season to go, hopefully a little bit more. How much forward planning have you had to do? Is it just week to week, fortnight to fortnight?
Not for us, no. We’re already on with where we’re going for pre-season. That’s how far in advance you’ve got to be.
We’re already succession planning. We’ve already got two young lads playing on loan at centre-half and you’re already planning. You’re already going ‘We’re going to lose two centre-halves’.
But we’ve got a bit of flexibility in terms of the contracts in the squad, but also feel if you look at Sutton, they are a couple of years down the line with their team and it’s been successful. A major part of the group that came up last year are still there and that is what has given them the platform to go.
Consistency of selection and consistency of the core of your group allows the football club to keep building and building, which is what we’ve got to do.
But for us, we did have to turn around a ship sailing in the wrong direction, so you have to take a group with a bit more flexibility in it in terms of the contract situation and, for us, it’s just about continuing to build our football club.
When you look at a game against a team like Oldham, how different is your approach to the one on Saturday against a team up at the top of the table?
No, for us it’s exactly the same. You have to adjust slightly for Sutton because of the physicality.
I haven’t watched Oldham since we played them last time out. I’ll get on them with the guys in between.
They’ve fluctuated. John Sheridan’s gone in there and they’ve played a back three at times, they’ve gone to a 4-2-3-1 albeit it hasn’t been majorly successful for them.
They won on Saturday at Scunthorpe away, which is a big win for them, so I’ll get my eyes on them tonight and we’ll have a strategy to give ourselves the best chance of taking maximum points, but we’re under no illusions. It will be a tough fixture.
You’ve mentioned before about the experience you have in the side with Glenn Whelan and Paul Coutts, but how much growth have you seen in the youngsters over the past few months?
A lot. There’s been moments where you’d probably want a bit more seniority in positions, but we haven’t had the ability to bring in players with the requisite quality for our team, so we’ve decided we could get access to those players, albeit they are young and inexperienced.
But for me, if you’re a good player it doesn’t matter what age you are.
I said to the guys before the game Sutton have good players but it’s the same pitch for both teams and if we’re better than them we should be able to beat them up on their pitch and play the right type of footy.
I believe the same about younger players. There is a lot to be said for experience, but also experience brings with it some things that can hold you back, whereas young, fearless, full of confidence, everything out in front of you in terms of your career and your potential, sometimes – certainly in my experience as a coach – I prefer that, I prefer the empty heads in terms of a back catalogue of what coaches have given to them.
I prefer that young spirit of “I can be the best in the world”. I’ve seen it with Harry Souttar. We were talking to him when he was at Fleetwood, we’re were talking to him about Virgil van Dijk. Where was Virgil at his age?
You saw the penny drop, “If I get my act together I can be a big player”. Before his injury, I was hearing Tottenham Hotspur and other big clubs are trying to take him.
Connor Taylor and James Connolly, for me, are in that boat.
Give young players the right opportunity at the right time and who knows what they can be.
For our two lads growing in there, I was really pleased with them on Saturday. I felt they came of age.
There will be another test and a different test in Davis Keillor-Dunn and Dylan Bahamboula on Tuesday night, but this is what they’re here for. They’re here to learn those different ways of playing football and those different ways of trying to put points on the board and win games.
When a player comes to the club like Elliot Anderson, do Newcastle say ‘He needs to be in this position, we want him to do this’, or are you given the freedom to do whatever you want with him?
I had a chat with the guys up there. Steve Harper is running the academy and Shola Ameobi is looking after the loan players. They are both former teammates of mine.
I just touch base with them all the time about how they’re getting on.
They were like ‘We’ve got a boy here who we think is a real talent, we think he’s our pick of the crop’.
I’m like ‘OK, can we have a look at him, can we watch him?’ It’s tough to get to these under-23 games, especially when it’s in the North East, because we have no scouts.
I don’t have a scout team. We’re trying to build that part of the club, but when Tommy (Widdrington) left, he took all his scouts with him.
If he did have any… He allegedly had five but I never met or spoke to any of them, but he left with them all.
We’ve been grafting away on our own, relying on good contacts and good networking.
I think we’ve pulled out a gem there. His first day of training… Mangs has said it’s the best first day of training he’s ever seen in our coaching experience. Racking my brain, I don’t think he’s wrong.
He really lit the session up on Thursday, to the point where the senior players are like ‘Whoa, we’ve got a player here’.
I think it has put a few on notice because a young lad has come in and when you see some of the touches from Saturday, I think he’s going to be a real player.
You see it in his cameo on Saturday, his desire to get on the ball and take it in tight spaces. It’s what he’s shown us on the training ground in the past couple of days and he’s got a confidence about himself.
I think he’s going to be a real player and we’re delighted to help him at this point in this journey and no doubt he will help us.
When we get back to the Mem on a proper surface, people like him will show what they’re about.
You’ve got a couple of games in hand, so a game like Tuesday night, if you win it you could almost be tapping the shoulder of the top seven. Do you feel like you need to win it to keep that momentum going?
We need to keep taking care of each game as it comes. For us, we want to win every game.
Oldham, I know they’re fighting for their lives, but we’re a much better team than them and if we turn up and play our style of football, unfortunately for an Oldham it will be a tough night.
But if we’re half off it and not quite at the races then they will cause us problems, so our focus is on us winning the next game, keeping our teamship going and if I’m honest I don’t really focus too much on the opposition and what they’re about because if we get it right, we’re a tough team to stop.
We aren’t firing on all cylinders yet and that is the thing that excites me the most. I still think we’re hitting threes and fours out of 10, I don’t think we’re hitting sixes, sevens, eights and nines, not from what I’m seeing on the training ground.
If that comes together, and I’m hoping it comes together when it really matters, which is the real Championship rounds.
It will start to come to the fore now in the next period for us of Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday.
We can’t lose focus on the next job and the next job is Oldham Athletic on Tuesday night.
Joey, you made a salient point about the Scunthorpe game, which feels quite similar to this one. There is an expectation to win and that is a material factor that can influence players in a negative way. They can tighten up because the onus is on them to blow them away from some peoples’ perspective. How do you deal with pressure because everything says you’re the better team, but nothing is a given?
Nothing is won on paper, is it? It’s won out there on the grass.
We always talk to our lads, we show them a lot of Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool mainly, because they’re the best in all different aspects of the game. They are what you want to be aiming at with the best players in the world, playing from certain structures and doing certain things. I always think you should give the best example you can.
If you want to be a big player, there is going to be pressure in any season, no matter the division and you’ve got to step up in those moments and take advantage of it.
For me, Liverpool have got to win on a Tuesday night in the Champions League, then they’ve got to win in the Premier League on a Saturday and a draw is a bad result.
That’s the pressure that is on the top boys, so start getting yourself under pressure as early as you can.
Expect to win every game and put yourself on that drive because if you want to be a top player, you want to play for successful clubs then at some point, whether you’re in division two, three or four, at some point in the season the expectation is going to be on you to win.
If we’re a proper outfit, which we think we are, Tuesday night is another tricky game because they are the hardest games to win. I remember Dychey always saying that two us at Burnley. The hardest games to win are the games where you’re absolutely expected to do that.
We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing, give the best account of ourselves on Tuesday and if we do that we’re a tough match for anyone in our division.
Finley, going to play?
Finley’s got a chance. He might struggle to get back in the team, but he’s got a chance.
Alfie Kilgour, how far away is he from playing?
Alf is hopefully back on the grass in the next seven to 10 days.
We just had to be careful with it because he had a knee injury in the past and it just didn’t settle after coming in and playing a big role for us in that Hartlepool game.
He’s nearly there.
(Leon) Clarkey, (Ryan) Lofty are two or three weeks.
Belly, hopefully for the weekend all being well. He got an Ostenil in his knee so that should settle it down and he should be back on the grass.
I think he’s going to miss Tuesday but back for Thursday.
Junior Brown and Trevor Clarke are still some way in the distance.
Elliot Anderson, you say he’s putting players on notice. Is he putting players on notice in central midfield or attacking midfield?
The luxury with him is it looks like he can play a couple of those positions, which is always how we try and play players and that was the big thing about taking him.
When I watched clips of him, you can clearly see the boy is talented.
I was talking to Shola and Stevie, asking what they think his best position is.
They’re saying “You’ll figure that out when you get your hands on him, but we think he is X, Y and Z”.
For me, I think we need a bit more time to work with him to find his best position, but what he has shown is he is a helluva player, and when you’ve got helluva on your hands, you find a way to get them in your team.
There is competition right throughout the squad, everyone is on notice and we want that.
You want the group to be strong, as you saw on Saturday with our bench, a player comes on and wins us a penalty and gets us back in the game.
It’s not going to be done by 11 players. If you’re going to be successful, it’s going to be a real squad effort and the good thing is we’ve got a really good group that is slowly starting to gather momentum.
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