Will Nightingale said he’s drawing strength from Wimbledon’s history of defying the odds as he seeks to lead a revival in fortunes this season.
Speaking ahead of Saturday’s home game versus Rochdale, our captain said: “There have been lots of ups and down in this club’s history and one thing I know is that it always seems to come out on top. I’m trying to keep as positive as I can. I’m still a young centre half, I’m still trying to learn, and get better myself. I’m trying to demand more from my team-mates as well. We are training hard, but, as everyone knows, it’s about what happens on a Saturday. Obviously, we are going to go into this Saturday going for the first win and hopefully we can deliver that for our fans.
“We understand how important it is. I know how desperate things are getting at the moment, but I’m just trying to keep that positivity and I’m going to try and deliver my best performance on the pitch. I’m sure all the boys are going to do the same as well because we want this for the club.
“Hopefully, this Saturday I can show, along with all the other boys, that we are going to mean business this season and we are going to turn things around. We have to, the club always seems to come back on top, and we have to use that to draw strength. We have to look back at last season and draw strength from that and show that we deserve to be in this league. At the moment, we are not doing that. We have to show that we deserve to be here and we are more than good enough to cope with the teams in this league.”
Will has enjoyed working with Glyn Hodges, who has had a very positive impact on the training ground, according to our captain.
“Glyn has a lot of experience, he has coached at some top clubs, including at Premier League level. You can see that on the training pitch with the sort of things that he brings into the sessions. You can tell that there’s a reason why he’s doing things, you can see that there’s a thought process behind what he’s doing. If he’s seen something going wrong on the Saturday he will think about what training session he can put on to eradicate that. He’s been bringing in sessions where you can tell that this is where we have to get better, this is where we have to improve. At least we are looking at where we are going wrong. If we can cut those mistakes out and things click then hopefully we can get a bit of momentum going.
“Mark Robinson is also a brilliant coach. He’s got some great ideas, some great technical aspects to bring in. Mark has good man-management skills and he knows quite a few of us that have come through. Hopefully, he can use that to make an impact with us and there’s a bit of positivity with us there.”
Will’s full interview includes his views on facing Rochdale and on the impact that Anthony Wordsworth and Marcus Forss can make on their returns. Click on the link below to watch the interview.