Nick Daws today talked positively about the response from players involved in Saturday’s home defeat at the hands of Bristol Rovers.
Speaking ahead of the Papa John’s Trophy home match against Arsenal Under-21s, our Assistant Manager said there was a real focus from the squad to put the 4-2 defeat behind them.
“If you look back at the game we conceded four poor goals,” said Nick. “We had an opportunity to get back into the game at 3-2 when Woody missed that chance. We then conceded again after making a couple of substitutions, we were on the back foot, and then we took the game to them again. In the second-half we had more opportunities on goal than they did. They defended well and their keeper pulled off a couple of good saves, but fundamentally four errors led to us losing the game, and that’s the most disappointing thing.
“There’s not a lot of time between the two games, so you do what you can. We’ve looked at the video of the game and watched the goals back today. We’ve had some constructive feedback from the players, as you would imagine, because they are honest and they understand the game. We’ve also been on the training pitch with the 11 that will start the game. We will look to put that behind us, and move onto the next game, which is the most important one.”
Nick added that plans to enhance individual player development, along with the overall squad, has been helped by a lot of work behind the scenes during the last year and a half.
“One of the things we talked about 18 months ago was the recruitment side, but also the opposition analysis and the individual player analysis. We do an incredible amount of work, the players are really responsive, they interact both online and offline to make sure they are improving. If you take off our two-week break, Swindon away on 10 October was the last time we had a full week to work with the players on the training pitch. The squad are preparing and playing all of the time, and we rotate, so the opportunity to actually do some work in the building is harder, and certainly under Covid restrictions it is.
“The use of online platforms that the club has invested in so that we can work with the players has been vital. We’ve been able to interact through those platforms and we did that through lockdown when we wasn’t able to work with the players on the training pitch. If where we are at the moment is anything to go, that was successful because we are in a very good place.”
Click on the link below to watch the full interview with Nick ahead of Tuesday's Papa John's Trophy match versus Arsenal Under-21s.