Let’s start with team news, Joey. Sam Finley is back after suspension. Has anyone else picked up a knock or is anybody else back after not being available?
Leon Clarke is back in contention, so that is really positive signs.
That’s great for him because after the injury there was some fear it could be potentially career-ending, or certainly very serious, so it’s great that he’s come back relatively quickly.
It was more career-ending due to the stage of his career that he was at, a long-term injury coming off the back of Shrewsbury where he had a similar setback.
You just didn’t know if the motivation would have been there to do the rehabilitation and come back, but credit to Leon, he’s worked tirelessly and he’s still got a lot to contribute.
He’s come back into the fold and since he got injured in September we haven’t had a recognised number nine. Like London busses, weirdly you sign one and then all of a sudden the one you had in the building originally comes back into contention.
Really nice options to have and pleased to see him back. Credit to his rehabilitation and his desire to contribute to the football club.
With Sam Finley and Leon Clarke back, you have that competition for places where all of a sudden you’ve got different options. Six weeks ago, you were down to bare bones in a lot of areas.
That’s what you want in any healthy team, you want competition running throughout.
There have been lots of times this season when we haven’t had the numbers to be able to do that, but now we’re starting to get it and I only think that will be a good thing for team performance.
Off the back of the win at the weekend and the manner or nature of it with the late goals, has there been a bit more of a buzz around the club?
No, not really. We were probably a bit harsh on ourselves in the aftermath of the game in terms of our performance.
We’re reaching a stage now where we’re not just happy winning games. If you looked at the club in the past, any way of winning a game is really important.
For us, it’s not only winning that is important, and getting those wins are massive, but there’s also an element of control and a desire to improve that underpins all of that.
We want to win every single week, but for us it’s about getting better and continuing that process and Saturday’s game for us is an opportunity to test ourselves against one of the best footballing sides in the division.
In terms of that test, you’re in a much better position going into it than perhaps you were then when the score eventually reflected it and they looked in control of that match for a long period of time.
Yeah. They were really good, relatively competent on the ball and beat us relatively comfortably in our own stadium, which didn’t sit too well with us at the time and it doesn’t sit particularly well with us now.
But I think we’ve progressed as a team. We’re certainly a much more balanced outfit now, we’ve got the best out in front of us, is my belief, and we’re in a position now where we feel we can go to these stadiums against the sides who had a good start to the early part of the season and show a slightly different look to what we did when we faced them in the early part of the season.
For us, it’s about improving and those marginal gains we feel we are making as a team are starting to pay us back in results.
There was no way in previous spells with the group as it’s been developing have we been able to maybe not fire on all cylinders but keep a clean sheet and take maximum points out of the game.
Saturday was a prime example of that, a game that was probably going to be draw. They had a number of opportunities and we had a number of opportunities and we’ve got belief in the quality of our players that if we’re given those opportunities, we’ll take them.
Aaron Collins does that for us and beats their goalkeeper and for Hartlepool, the boy Cullen doesn’t manage to beat Belly (James Belshaw), so the game flips on that and then Antony Evans’ individual quality puts the cherry on the icing on top of that cake and gives us a 2-0 victory.
We’re moving in the right direction and it’s another tough test for us at Swindon on Saturday.
As you look at the table, it’s a bit skewed by the fact that teams have played varying numbers of games because of COVID and the rest of it, but do you set yourselves targets? Do you have a sense of what it would take to get yourselves in the play-off mix or, if it goes really well, the automatic mix?
I think you’ve just got to win the next game. For us, it’s just about what’s in front of us in the next game.
Swindon are out in front of us, a good side. Fourth in the table, 14 th in the form table.
We know what a good side they are from when we played them, but also we think we’re in a position to certainly start to go on a decent run showcase what we’re about as a group.
I’m really looking forward to the second half of the season, but again they just come at you one game at a time, albeit the next few weeks they’re going to come relatively thick and fast because of the Saturday, Tuesdays.
If we keep winning the next game and the next game and the next game, eventually the league table will take care of itself.
Morning, Joey. I’m sure this is an occasion you’re relishing. A big crowd of more than 10,000 expected with about 3,000 Gasheads. It’s a chance for you and your players to make a statement and show how much you’ve improved.
We’re just looking for performance. For us, every game has different challenges. We’re trying to drive our performance within that.
Big away followings, we’ve kind of disappointed when we’ve had them, whether that be Exeter or Forest Green.
I’m really hoping that the lads turn up and do themselves justice because it’s going to be loud in there, it’s going to be noisy and it’s somewhat of a local derby.
As I said, in the home game we didn’t give a good account of ourselves. I know it’s different personnel and there have been lots of different changes since then, but also we were disappointed with aspects of that game and we know we must be better with the 3,000-odd fans we’re likely to have in the stadium.
The two Zains, Westbrooke and Walker, have departed the club this week. What are your thoughts on their departures?
They weren’t getting enough football here. They’re two good kids and they never caused me a moment’s bother, but they have to go and play.
The only way you get better is by playing football and unfortunately for those guys, they couldn’t quite force their way into the lineup here.
Credit to them. A lot of players you see nowadays want to sit and pick their wages up and use a football club if they’re not playing as a glorified health club, but credit to the two Zains.
They’re obviously going in at different levels but they want to get out and play football.
For us, it’s an opportunity to recycle some kind of wasted cash into people and players who will be utilised by us between now and the end of the season.
With Zain Walker, I know he’s a player who you gave chances to last season and you rated him as a player. In letting him go on a permanent, is that doing right by him because it’s what he needs for his career?
You don’t always gets signings right. If you sign 10 players and get six right, you’re doing well in our profession. As a manager, you live and die on your recruitment.
The other side that goes unnoticed is the people that you let out the building. If you let people out of the building and they get better and kick on, you’re obviously not doing that role particularly well.
The one thing I would say is if you look back at my managerial career at Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers, not one player I’ve let out of the building has got better and come back to bite us in the arse.
I’ve almost got a 100 per cent rate on that.
As a player, I was very quick to work out what you were good at, what you weren’t good at, whether you could develop that, whether you couldn’t and spotting weakness in players, mainly because I used it to exploit it on a matchday scenario.
That’s probably one of the biggest skills I’ve got as a coach, the ability to evaluate talent when I work with it on a daily basis.
Those two guys, clearly talented in different ways, but just not at the required level for what I want for this football club and not what’s going to take us to the places I want to get to.
Unfortunately in football, it’s not a charity. It’s not about keeping good lads around, it’s not a social club. It’s about creating a winning organisation and we’re showing at the minute, with the last two games, we’re fitter, we’re stronger, we’re able to win games without playing particularly well and the football club is finally moving in the right direction, on and off the pitch.
From the outside looking in with a couple in and three out in this window, you seem to be in a good place in the transfer window. You’ve got flexibility and options to make further additions if you want to. Is that how you see it?
We’re still probably trimming off some of the excess. The people who stay here are only going to be the people who contribute.
We don’t have a 23s group and if you’re 19, 20, 21 and you’re not in and around our first team, the reality is you’re going to need to drop down, you’re going to need to find your career in non-league.
It’s not like we’re Chelsea or Man City where we go “OK, you can be in our under-23s at 22 or 23 because the pathway is so hard to get in our first team”.
We’re in division four. There’s 92 clubs in our country and if you can’t get in and around the squad of a division-four club at 22 or 23, then you’d be better served going and playing men’s football on a Saturday, maybe working a job and playing part-time and trying to build yourself back up.
You can’t have waste at these levels. Everything we have or everything we’ve got has to be going into the 15 or 16 that take the field on matchday.
Junior Brown is a player we’ve not heard about for a while. Obviously he had his injury, what’s his status at the moment?
He’s still not 100 per cent.
I’m due to have a conversation with him at some point today about possibly moving on.
I don’t think it’s going to work out for us. I’m not sure what options he’s got but for us, if you’re not playing you’re not going to be here long.
For me, either you’re playing and contributing, or you’re on an exit path from the football club because we can’t have any passengers.
It hasn’t quite worked out for Junior yet and I don’t think it’s going to work out for him.
Sometimes transfers and signings don’t work out. We took Junior for a bit of cover and he hasn’t hit the ground running, similarly with Trevor Clarke, and we’re going to have to get players in who can hit the ground running and help our football team.
Sion Spence is a player who is caught in a bit of a logjam due to the talented players ahead of him in the pecking order. How do you see his future and have there been any discussions with Crystal Palace?
Yeah, there have been a few discussions back and forth.
It’s straightforward, if you’re not in the team, it’s not my job to get you in the team. It’s your job to make sure I can’t leave you out of the side.
Unluckily for Sion, we’ve got more than 11 good players here and there is high competition for places, especially in his position because Antony Evans, Sam Finley’s now back, you’ve got Sam Nicholson, Luke Thomas and Leon Clarke has come back in.
Competition for places is only getting harder and it’s up to players to force their hand on that, whether they’re 19 or 39. It’s your job to give the best account of yourself and be available for selection. We pay players to be available for selection and it’s then up to us whether we select them on a matchday.
We can only select XI to start and the rest on the bench. It’s your job as a player to make sure you can’t be left out.
Sion’s had a few cameos and scored goals and shown what he can do, but as of yet when he’s been given starts, I don’t think he’s taken the shirt and really made it his own.
That will be the challenge for him in the next period and if he does it, superb, everyone will be happy, but if he doesn’t Crystal Palace may well want to bring him back and send him elsewhere.
I haven’t heard that as of yet, but if that is the case then that’s the case, but we’ll always pick the best 11 players for our team to give us the best chance of winning on a matchday, whether that’s a loan player or a young player or a senior player. We just want to win games of football.
You mentioned last week that Harvey Saunders had a setback with his return due to a broken bone in his hand and he was due to speak to a specialist. Has he had that feedback yet and when is he due to return? Also, Alex Rodman is nearing a return. Where is he in that process?
Rodders is back on the grass and he says he’s feeling good. He’ll probably be a couple of weeks. He’s going to join back in with the group next week, so we’ll be playing it by ear a little bit.
Harvey’s still got the cast on his hand, he can’t join in with full contact because the bone has not been pinned and it’s still relatively delicate.
He’s chomping at the bit, as you can imagine, because apart from the hand he feels great.
He’s desperate to join in but the medical experts that we have at the club won’t allow that to happen.
As of yet, it’s being monitored on a week by week basis and he’s got to be referred to the specialist, but he’s not going to be in contention for the weekend’s game, that’s for sure.
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