Glyn Hodges believes that AFC Wimbledon are in good shape for the all-important League One run-in with just two players currently out injured.
In an interview from the training ground ahead of Wimbledon’s home match against Bolton Wanderers, our manager reported that only Will Nightingale and Paul Osew are currently ruled out. With Paul Kalambayi and Anthony Wordsworth having both returned to full training, Glyn expects good competition for places in the starting 11 during the rest of this season. Kwesi Appiah and Adam Roscrow have both added to that in recent weeks by producing encouraging performances after putting their injuries behind them.
“We set-up differently for each team, but with the performance we produced on Saturday it would be hard for anyone to lose their place, as the team did so well," said Glyn. "Maybe we won’t (make changes) this week, but I will sleep on it!
"We haven’t got the development games for them to get 90 minutes in, which Woody and Paul Kalambayi have missed out on this week. We have had to get them fit by putting them on the pitch when the time is right. We’ve done that with Kwesi, we keep upping his minutes, and he had 75 minutes on Saturday. Also, we have Adam and he’s champing at the bit. They are both feeding off each other and it’s just about keeping them fit and keeping the group fit. We’ve only got a couple out and we’ve had a lot more players injured than this. It’s the right timing and it will be good competition if we can keep them fit until the end of the season.
“The message to the players is that we went up there (Bolton) and we should have won the game, so we probably have some unfinished business. They came back well and we got done by a late sucker-punch, which was really disappointing. We just need to mirror what we did on Saturday by showing the same desire and attitude to see if we can get the three points this week.”
Glyn added that the mood around the training ground has been particularly upbeat after the impressive victory at Gillingham last time out.
“It was a great result for us on Saturday and the week’s training has been fantastic. The boys are buzzing. It was a lively and loud session today. One more training session to come tomorrow and we will be ready to go on Saturday.
“The emphasis is on the 10 games as there are 10 games left. It doesn’t matter who you are playing, we can potentially win all 10. We set out to do that. We’ve shown in the past that we can take points off the top teams and we’ve had times when we should have taken more points off the bottom ones. It evens itself out and it swings in roundabouts. I’m not targeting one particular game as anyone can give you a hard match and beat you on any given day. We just have to be prepared and make sure that we are giving ourselves a chance in every game. Hopefully, in 10 games’ time we are in a good place.
“Today, we had to go on Walton’s 3G. It’s a good surface. It’s not ideal, it’s not what we wanted, but everyone has to come out and we did some work today. Some do a bit more than others on it, but we just have to get on with it. This happened last week, so we will repeat that this week, and we’ve got to do it. We get on with it, we don’t worry about it, and it’s not going to affect us.”
Take a look below at Rob Cornell’s full interview with Glyn.