Wally Downes today said that Will Nightingale is ready to be pitched back into action after putting a knee injury behind him.
However, our manager added that the match at Scunthorpe on Saturday will come too soon for Kwesi Appiah and Deji Oshilaja. Kwesi played and scored on international duty for Ghana in midweek, but Wally said he’s not fit enough yet to be considered and the same applies to Deji.
“Kwesi got 45 minutes for Ghana, but that’s only 45 minutes in a long time, so perhaps he needs more minutes. We will try to get a game into him next week, although we don’t have a reserve game. He’s only had one half of football so that’s probably not enough. Will was back training today and he’s ready for selection. Deji has not had any minutes out on the pitch so we need to get some game-time into him first.”
Ahead of the trip to Lincolnshire, Wally spoke about the importance of the whole squad during the run-in and he said that the players have to get back to basics after the defeat against Gillingham.
“I’ve got nothing but praise for the players that are not in the squad. I know that I’m going to need them, whether it’s just to support the players that are in the team or to come into the team. Their attitude has been fantastic. Although it was an under-strength Forest Green side on Tuesday (development match), you can only go out and beat them, as we did. We were 5-0 up at half-time and the second-half was going to be easy, but everyone did really well.
“We need to show resilience and they need to be confident in the way that we play. We’ve highlighted the few issues that we had on Saturday, simple stuff including our shape from goal kicks, and defending from throw-ins, so that we don’t give away goals from set plays. We had been better than that recently and we have to get back to doing that. The football we play, you can’t say it’s irrelevant, but you can’t play football unless you get the fundamentals right. We have to make sure we are fully latched into the fundamentals to give ourselves a chance to play football.”
The full interview with Wally is available to watch by clicking on the link above to our iFollow channel.