Not the result you were looking for, Joey, but I think when the substitutions happened that game could have gone either way, couldn’t it?
We had to get back in the game. We find ourselves a goal behind and didn’t really play well after the 30-minute mark. We controlled where the game was taking place without creating a lot of goalscoring opportunities.
We’re figuring our way out again with this new group and this new team, so it’s going to take a bit of time. In a month’s time when the window is closed, we’ll have everything we need and with the greatest respect to the starting XI today, if you had said to me at the end of last season Zain Westbrooke and Trevor Clarke were going to be in our starting XI on the opening day of the season, I would have said ‘My god, we must have had a bad summer’.
The reality of it is we’ve got work to do. We’ve got six or seven to do and we’re fully aware of who they are. We’ve got lots of moving targets and the players are aware of that, they know we’re short.
They’re not stupid, they can sense it, the same way the fans can. I’m fully aware of the work we’ve got to do and it isn’t easy to replace Connor Taylor or Elliot Anderson and with the resources and budget we’ve got, we have to be really smart in the marketplace.
By the end of the window closing, we’ll have every piece of the jigsaw that we need to be successful, but at this moment in time you’ve got to play cat and mouse to get value out of the market and unfortunately that leaves us short.
As I’ve said, it creates opportunities for people and I don’t think when you lose games of football any of them can come in and say ‘I’ve furthered my cause’.
There were some good performances in there, Luca Hoole was superb at right centre-half, considering what a difficult opponent Jamille Matt can be. I was really pleased with loads of elements of some of the lads, James Gibbons coming in there and Jordan Rossiter who are new to the group.
John Marquis was a really bright spark in the first half and he gave us something different and Aaron’s got that monkey off his back with a goal. Last year, it took a long while into the season to get it.
There are some good signs, and as I say, when what happens to one of our brothers, one of our teammates this week, it does put things into perspective.
We’ll be back, we’ll be better, we’ll be stronger but we have to be mindful this is just a game as football, as much as it matters and we care about it, we’ve got to remember to be young, fit and healthy and have the ability to perform is sometimes taken for granted.
It’s really hit home this week how quick your life can change.
Nick was hoping to be here, and he wanted to pass on his thanks to you and the rest of the team…
As you know, we’re all with him and I thought the fans were superb on the 16th minute, and even Forest Green warming up in the T-shirts.
He’s going to need all the support, he and his young family. I think he’s got a young baby on the way in a short space of time and he’s already got a little one.
He’s a player who has got a year left on his deal. He hasn’t got medical insurance like some of the big hitters have and we must do everything we can to soften the blow of having you profession taken away from you.
He’s dreamt about being a footballer. He came here and he was getting better, improving and he was really well thought of in our group and played a vital role in our promotion last year.
You think you’ve got an injury and a sore leg and you’re lucky we’ve got the professional people we’ve got here in Stu (Leake) and the doc (Ian Ferguson), who get him scanned and your world is just flipped on its head.
He’s probably had that and played on it last season, so it’s a testament to Nick as a man and a character.
As I say, we’ve got to do everything we can as a football club to support him and his family. Everyone is around him at this minute in time and I’m just gutted we couldn’t win for him today.
No Sam Finley, what are his chances for the game against Burton?
We’ll monitor him during the week. Obviously, Couttsy serves another game of his suspension.
Sam picked up a little bit of a groin issue in the (training) game that we had here and it’s rumbled on this week, so it took him out of the opening fixture.
He’ll probably be pushing hard, knowing Sam, to be involved at Burton so we’ll assess that this week.
Joey, what did you learn about your side?
That they’ll fight and compete, even if the chips are down and we concede a goal, they’ll keep scrapping away.
We got ourselves in the game and we had four frontmen on the park. You look around at the bench and there are a lot of young kids there and you’re like ‘OK, is his the type of game of game to put them in?’
The other one was we brought Whelo onto the bench, mainly to act as an insurance policy for Jordan Rossiter who was our only recognised holding midfielder. I was only going to use Glenn if anything happened to Jordy because Sam and Couttsy, for one reason or another, are not available today and we don’t have the structure yet to use the impact of the five subs correctly.
I thought the subs made a difference today. Harvey Saunders made something happen and forced a reaction and a chain of events that led to Aaron’s goal, and I thought Lofty competed really hard and tried his best.
We still had a few subs up our sleeve, but unfortunately I didn’t feel it was the right call to put the younger players into the game at that point.
What did you make of the three debutants that started the game?
I think they all did alright. It would have been nice if we played a bit better and obviously won the game, but in terms of an introduction I think the fans have gone away with a good idea of how those guys play.
They competed, they ran hard. I thought John gave us something we never had last year, which is someone who can get you up the pitch and give you a physical edge on the frontline. We’ve got to sync that up and get some movement patterns around him a bit better.
We’re a completely different team to what we were last year because a lot of our joy came from the creation of opportunities in wide areas and at this moment in time we’ve got work to do in the transfer market.
Do you also have work to do in terms of the attack is something that takes a while to click? Does it need more time?
Yeah, people in those forward positions need to work together to figure out what each is likely to do. Your attack runs more efficiently if that is the case and we’ve got a lot of players building new relationships.
But there are also players here who, let’s be candid, shouldn’t be starting for us.
So when you speak about the window and the work to be done, have there been any developments in the past few days?
Not as yet. We’ve got to be patient, there is a month to go in the window.
It would be nice to have some of the bigger budgets (in the league) because you can force the issue, you can offer five hundred grand or £1million or £1.5million, because that’s what we’re up against now.
Last year we were not up against that, this year we’re not the biggest fish in this pond. We’re a minnow and we’ve got to scrap for every point we’re going to get and we’ve lost a point today, that’s the reality. We were at 1-1 and we pushed to try to get three points and ultimately we’re undone by a real moment of quality from their boy.
Whether he’s meant it or not, I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask him, but he was putting the ball into a great area anyway and to beat Belly… As you know, anything that beats Belly must be a good effort on goal.
Credit to them, they’ve lost Ebou Adams, they’ve lost Nicky Cadden and Kane Wilson. They’ve probably got work to do in the marketplace like us, but also they’ve got three points on the board.
At Burton next week, we’ve got a tough task but we must go and take maximum points.
Finally, I wanted to ask about Nick Anderton. I thought everything today was dealt with in a really nice way after a really tough few days for the club.
Yeah, it’s tricky, it’s something you don’t account for. We’re not going to use it as an excuse, we should have done better to get a win and dedicate it to Nick. We’re going to have to do that next week now.
It’s such a tricky thing to deal with because you’ve got a young person whose career has pretty much been flipped on its head from nowhere. He’s so well thought of in the group and so much of a good lad that you can’t see the fairness in it from time to time, but the other side of that is you don’t find it and it rumbles on and it doesn’t get detected and it gets worse and worse.
The good thing for Nick is he’s going to watch his children grow up, fingers crossed. He’s not going to face chemotherapy as it stands. He’s probably not going to walk for a year of his life, which for a 26-year-old man is a very worrying time.
But we’ll all be with him, every single one at the football club and he’ll see the fans, and not just our fans and players, but there players with the jerseys on.
The football community has been around him and it’s been superb.
He’s not a Premier League player, someone who can afford to retire and not have to earn another pound note. He’s got a year left on his deal and we’ll do everything we can to help him for the rest of his life, never mind the rest of his contract.
He’s got two young babies and no medical insurance because they can’t afford to have that cover at this level. Maybe the players at the level where I played did and a bit higher.
I’m just hoping we can raise him a few quid. I’m going to run the London Marathon myself. I’ve been putting it off but I’m going to do it for Nick and try to raise a few quid for him.
We’ll have to try to do everything we can to try to make sure he and his family have got some security going forward because he’s a top kid and he’s got a baby on the way in 10 or 11 weeks and another baby in the house.
You’ve got to take in perspective. We’ve lost today and sometimes you feel sorry for yourself as a coach, and then when things like that happen to people that are close to you, people you care about, it snaps you out of it.
We’ll be back, we’ll be better, we’ll win games of football and the key for is us making sure Nick, one of our brothers, one of our friends, is taken care of at the moment.
Joey, on much more trivial matters, and it feels weird asking this now, but defensively you were exposed at times today. Does that show the value of Coutts and Finley? Was it the changes in midfield that led to the back four being cut open too easily at times?
Yeah, we’ve got two 20-year-olds at centre half and I thought they were superb. I thought they did really well in most of the game.
We’ve got a bit of work to do in the full-back areas for sure.
I’m not laying this at anyone’s door, we could be better as a team. We’re not as strong as what we could be at this moment and I’m not the only manager in the football pyramid that feels like that. It’s probably only Pep and Jurgen who have got all the resources available.
We’ve got work to do and people know us now, they know what we’re about.
There was nothing I saw today that’s made me think ‘God, I thought we were up there and we’re actually down here’. All today has confirmed to me is we are exactly where I thought we were.
We’re no worse than what I thought, but we’re no better than what I thought. We’ve got a data point now and the first game is out of the way.
I’m gutted for the fans because we’ve built incredible momentum here, but at this moment in time we’re not as strong as we could be. In a month’s time, we’ll be as strong as we can be and we’re all aware of the work we’ve got to do.
We’ve got loads of young players, Hooley’s first game as a right centre-half and I thought he did superbly. There were a few moments and you have to give their lad credit, but we get back in the game.
They scored an outrageous goal from a position where you’re happy with him shooting from, pretty much, but a moment of quality and we must be better.
Is it fair to say you’ve just got to grind away for the time being until you get the quality additions you will look to make in the final four weeks of the window?
Yeah, and Sam and Couttsy getting injured exacerbates the fact we’re six or seven short and then we lose another two.
James Connolly didn’t train, he’s been ill. He’s managed to get in the game and play. He trained on Friday and played today, so at one point we had no recognised centre-halves available and then one comes back and it’s a 20-year-old.
You don’t want to be going up a division without key components of your team but that’s what we’ve got.
He had enough to win the game. There’s not much in the two teams, let’s be honest. They were the champion team last year, they’re a good side, no doubt about it.
They’ve been raided by teams above them and they’ve got work to do clearly, but I think they’ve got more of their components in place.
We’ve lost Connor and Elliott, two starters, and you have to say Zain and Trevor Clarke ain’t starters for us. So when you look at it that way, the thing is can you be squad players? Can you affect the squad?
Everyone at the football club wants Zain to do really well, but at some point he’s got to do well. You’ve got to do well and do the job. He had an opportunity today and you’ve got to keep asking how many opportunities are you going to get?
But there are going to be opportunities before the window closing, not just for those two lads. There are five or six others who really need to start staking a claim.
I don’t think the young kids are going to affect it. The gap is too much for them. We might have got away with some of them in League Two last year but we’ve got into League One, we’re in a different space now, and we don’t have that 23s group so the jump from 18s to first team is far too big at the minute.
They’re doing OK. They will probably need loans. When I say they’re far away, it’s far away from affecting the first-team picture and that was felt today. I’m wanting another two options off the bench and I ain’t got them because I’m putting kids in there and we’re 1-1 and it’s different if you’re looking at someone who has got a bit of experience.
We’re a work in progress, but we’re definitely better than this time last year as a football club.
No Josh Grant; has he got an injury?
He’s been injured for three or four weeks, Josh. He picked up a knee injury before the Swansea game so he’s going to miss another couple of weeks.
Has Paul Coutts got an injury as well as his suspension?
Couttsy had a bit of a tight thigh but obviously his suspension took him out for today. We’re backing off him because he’s suspended anyway.
Sam will be touch and go for next weekend but again, we’ve got six senior players to bring in, definitely. If we can get a seventh, great. We’ve got work to do in the market.
In that regard, Connor Taylor started for Stoke. Have you had any confirmation that door is closed?
If he’s starting for them, he isn’t going to come here. If he’s starting for Stoke City in the Championship, I’d be surprised.
As I say, we’d love to have Connor back, but he isn’t our player and we’ve got to have different irons in the fire. We’ve got a few different options there, but again teams are keeping players in for pre-season, mainly Premier League, and they’re going ‘No, we’re going to keep them for another week’ because they’re a week behind us.
We’ve just got to be patient and wait for the shakeout. Usually at the end of the January window and the summer window we advance the group and lots of stuff happens, as you know, in the last 24 hours of the market, let alone the last 24 days. Elliot Anderson happened in the last five minutes and Antony Evans was the same.
We’ve just got to stay mobile. The fans were superb today and they’re aware we’re far from 100 per cent. Imagine if we felt we were 100 per cent and then we had that result and performance today and we’re like ‘God, we’re miles away’.
We feel like we’re miles away, we feel like we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’ve still got enough to win games and compete and give ourselves a chance. We’re no whipping boys, but also we’re not as strong as we were last year, but we got stronger because we had two windows to recruit players.
Some players who came on the journey last year, they’re not going to come on the journey this year, unfortunately, because the level has gone up and if you can’t stay at the level, you go.
The problem for us is we’ve got five subs this year. You go from three to five and that’s a tactical advantage, if you’ve got players at the back end who can impact it.
At this moment in time, I don’t believe we have because we’ve been putting young kids in there and Whelo, who’s been playing Sunday League with his mates all summer and has come in as a coach, predominantly as a coach, but because of injuries and suspensions in key areas we’ve had to sit Whelo on the bench and register him as a player as an player, as an insurance policy.
I guarantee you, if we didn’t put Whelo on there, something would have happened to one of those in there.
I’m not caning Zain, but Zain is starting for us and Zain’s best hope for us, I think, is to affect the squad from the bench, but he’s required and was called upon today. I thought he did OK, but we need lads who do more than OK. OK is not good enough.
We might have got away with OK at one point, but we won’t get away with OK this year. We’ve got to be better than OK.
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