Hi Nigel, how is Tomas Kalas, he went off on Saturday, is there any update on his fitness?
Yeah, he’s fine. He’s trained this week and he’s recovered so he’s available to be selected as they say.
That’s good news in a season of injuries, George Tanner is back on the training ground, how close to a return is he?
Not imminently. As you know it’s a reoccurrence of a hamstring injury so we’ll be careful with that one. He looks okay and he seems to be dealing with it a very positive way but when he’ll be back in the squad I’m not going to give any sort of timescale at the minute because I’m not overly sure. It will depend on how he continues to develop his skills.
And for other team news, is anyone available that hasn’t been?
Rob Atkinson has looked pretty good in training so he may be in my thoughts for the weekend in some way or another. We’ve got players who are making progress which is good for us because going into the last 11 games of the season it would be nice to have a few different options.
Is Danny Simpson part of your plans because he hasn’t featured in recent weeks?
No, he’s not.
Is that half an eye on the future and thinking about next season?
I’m always thinking about the future, both the present and the future. Danny has had a frustrating season on a personal level for him, it’s life.
You’re not someone who likes to look back so looking forward to Birmingham on Saturday, what do your team need to do better to get the desired results?
Replicate the previous home performances really. 70-75% of the Swansea game was very, very good away as well, Preston away we played very well too, we’ve been doing okay and then we throw in a curveball like last week where actually we didn’t perform as a team.
Too many players had an off day and it was frustrating for the players in particular, they were very annoyed with themselves and how we didn’t get going. It was a missed opportunity but I think we’ve seen that throughout the season. We’ve struggled to main the standards when we’ve hit them, recently at home in particular we’ve been good.
This game this weekend will be a tough challenge because they can be pretty direct and they’ve got some good players as well but they can make it physical so we’ll have to be able to deal with that side of the game.
Last week, let’s put it down to a bad day at the office, so to speak.
In terms of keeping a clean sheet, how important would that be?
It’s more important to win the game but if we can do both then that would be great. We have had a tough week in terms of the types of training we’ve done, quite a lot of it has been to do with defensive work but of course with the players we have in the squad as well it’s been a good counterattacking week for our forwards so it’s always about trying to combine all aspects of the game in training but certainly we need to make it more difficult for teams to breach our defence.
How important is a rare Tuesday off to spend time with the players and how crucial could that be going into the game at the weekend?
I don’t know, time will tell. I don’t really think of it like that. I got asked after the Forest game whether three games in a week has paid it’s price. I honestly don’t think it should do necessarily, I don’t think it was the physical numbers that were the problem, it’s Championship football so you have to get on with it.
I don’t overthink that type of stuff, when you get a week to work on stuff and we have a lot of players that have played an awful lot of minutes this season, whenever you get an opportunity to do different sort of work, it can be beneficial.
There’ll always be one or two players within the squad who we can offload a little bit on a week like this. It’s important to get the main workday right in terms of when you time it so that there’s enough time for players to recover and prepare for the game at the weekend because that’s the most important thing.
How beneficial for Nahki [Wells] to get some minutes and goals for the under 23s in the week, has he been a victim of the other forwards being in the goals in recent weeks?
Yes, very much so. He’s a good player and I know that he’s been excellent around the place and the very fact he was so keen to get some competitive pitch time shows you that he’s still very switched on about trying to get himself into the best possible position so that when he gets his chance he can take it.
I felt for him last week as well when it’s difficult to go on as a sub in that game, he’s had a difficult season for a player who is used to playing regularly so that in itself is something more difficult and he’s one of our senior players and he wants to play. He’s got a real enthusiasm to play football but it’s how it is.
He’s been a real credit to himself in the way he has supported the team. I’ve worked with players in the past that would react differently to how he has and that’s not to say he’s happy, of course he’s not, he wants to play, but he’s had to conduct himself with a lot of professionalism and I think that should be recognised.
Looking a bit more long term, would you like to give Tommy Conway a bit more time in the first team between now and the end of the season?
Yeah, if he earns it. If he earns the right for it. Last year I think he scored on his debut when it was a start against Millwall, the game itself was a really bad day for us.
He’s a capable lad, he’s one that if he doesn’t break in this season he’ll be there or thereabouts next season, it’s nice to have options like that.
Is Birmingham a good test for your players, you’ve already said they play quite direct, what are you expecting at Ashton Gate on Saturday?
A very tough game, it’s important whenever you play sides around you that you do everything you can to win those types of games.
The season for us is still one where we want to show more obvious progression and that’s always how you look at the league table. It’s been quite an arduous campaign in that regard because we can’t get back-to-back wins so making progress becomes more difficult.
It’s our next game and because it’s our next game, we want to win it. That’s what it is and that sounds a very simple philosophy but that’s what it is. I’m not really interested in people talking in a more complex way, we have 11 games left and that’s quite a sizeable chunk, that’s not far off a quarter of the season where we can still make some progression.
You mentioned the progression, looking back at the reverse fixture, I’m sure you don’t want to remember it…
I do remember it, I remember it well.
How happy are you with your progression from that game four months ago?
Very. That was a night in which, a bit like it’ll be this weekend, they can play with wingbacks and when they play with fullbacks they give them a lot of width and create crossing situations. We didn’t stop any crosses when we played them and consequently, we caused ourselves all sorts of problems so on that night it was Jay [Dasilva] on the left and George [Tanner] on the right and we had a bad day, even though we started the game very, very well.
You’ve got to be able to deal with what the main threats of your opponents are and we were very poor at that on that evening.
On top of that we have a relatively settled type of formation, whether I like it or you like it or anybody else likes it or not, it’s irrelevant. It’s more about what suits the players we currently have available.
That’s what it’s always about so I don’t want to necessarily tweak how we play because of who we’re playing. Our Achilles heel at the moment is giving too many soft goals away but that probably occurs a lot more because we are more expansive and able to be a more attacking threat.
At the start of the season we were a lot tighter and a lot safer, we had different players available and we were more solid in some respects but we were too one dimensional as an attacking threat because of that. I try to review performances as we go and we’ve made massive inroads into creativity. You wouldn’t have thought that if you’d seen us last week because we were poor but we were poor in that respect because we couldn’t get hold of the ball in midfield.
All those things together would indicate that last week was a bit of a bad day but we know that we are a very capable side and what we have to do is combine our ability to cause teams problems but keep things tight and a lot of that is down to either concentration or sometimes ability I’m afraid.
You mentioned that you’ve been working on counterattacking, is that how you see the game panning out on Saturday?
It’s what we’re good at, very, very good at. We worked at it because we were doing lots of defending as well. Training is very important but it’s only important if players train how they expect to play. I’ve never been a believer in saving yourself for games because most players at this level aren’t good enough for that.
Even the top end, the very top end players, they still train to play and that’s the crooks to it. I would rather train for short periods of time and it be competitive with an edge to it, I like that, because you can’t turn it on and off like a tap. It’s a skill and anybody who thinks that they can will have a bit of a shock because you can’t do that.
The players have trained hard this week and if they play the way they’ve applied themselves this week then we’ll be fine.
How’s Matty James and do you have to be cautious with his minutes like you have been with Joe Williams?
No, because it’s a different injury. His injury is a different type of scenario, it’s pain free and that means that you can crack on regardless. When you’ve got players who have reoccurring soft tissue injuries, that’s when alarm bells should be ringing and that means that the approach has to be measured.
Matty is a very important member of our squad but a lot of it is to do with his ability to play with discomfort or as it is at the minute with no pain at all so he’s fine. He’ll be available for selection at the weekend.
Just going back to Wells, did he ask to play in the under 23s game midweek?
He had the option to play and he played which is great.
How do you get the best out of him in the first team?
I don’t have to get the best out of him, he has to get the best out of himself when he gets the opportunity and that’s the thing. It’s about earning the place to start with and the ones who earn the place need to stay there and the way they do that is by playing well or delivering what it is that they’re in the side to do.
It would be fair to say that our forward players have contributed very positively to the team this season and that includes Nahki when he’s played and come on as a sub. He’s a bit unfortunate but life’s like that so I don’t make statements like saying ‘when you’re in the side, stay there’ and then just change it around because it suits me.
That may happen occasionally but the bottom line is, the players need to play well to keep in the side which means that if you’re one of those who’s not currently there, you might have to have a really good game when you get your chance and that’s the beauty of competition.
Fairness is not something that I think is in this game, I would be kidding myself, I strive for it all the time and we all see fairness as being slightly different anyway.
Max O’Leary is back in training…
Yeah, he’s been out in the field all week, he’ll be in and about.
From the last three games is it now Dan Bentley’s shirt to lose?
I haven’t even given it a thought. He’s played well since he’s been in there and I wouldn’t think of it like that. He’s in there, stay there.
Ryley Towler played in midweek, is there an injury update for him after he went off?
It’s just a precaution. If you think that somebody of his age and how much he’s grown over the past two or three years, it’s very important that we err on the side of caution. He’s made great strides throughout this season and certainly between the end of last season and the start of preseason, he really did develop physically as well, not just the ability to play.
He was a midfield player and he’s made real progressions over the past 12 months and it’s really important that he’s able to, I’m not writing off for the season at this point, I had a conversation with him the other day. He’s had a really interesting year even though he’s not played a lot for us he had a very successful loan period, he was very good in preseason last summer.
He’s one for the future, certainly.
Looking to next season is he someone you’re looking to give some minutes to over the next 11 games?
I don’t think about it in terms of giving someone minutes, I’m hopeful that his progression will continue and that he will be a very pleasant surprise for us. Our academy has produced some excellent players but they’re all of the attacking mould so it would be nice for us to get some defensive thugs out of the academy too. Not that Ryley is that, he’s a top lad.
Even Duncan [Idehen] when he was in the squad, it’s a big ask. For him it’s nice to be able to involve some of the youngsters in matchday squads just for the experience as much as anything and it gives them a taste of what to work towards because once you get to the under 18s in an academy you have to start thinking about where you can break into a first team.
Whether that’s at the club or somewhere else, that’s why it’s important to have this competitive nature in how we develop players. It’s not just about developing attractive players in terms of being good on the ball, it’s game effective players and anyone in our academy at the moment would recognise that they’re at a club where if they continue to improve, they’ve got a chance.
Which is great for us because what we’re trying to do, of course we need to supplement that with a side that can function, we’re working towards that but it’s been up and down this season so far.
Is it harder, not speaking about Ryley specifically, but is it harder for younger defenders than it is for younger attackers to play in the Championship because of the physicality?
I’ll be honest and say I don’t know if I’m in a position to give you an accurate answer. It’s only my feeling, I’ve not worked in youth football for 15 years or so. My instinct says that we’ve gone through a revolution in terms of how academies are constructed. I can’t generalise or have any authority on that subject but once you get into the real world of first team football, managers will always want defenders that can actually defend first.
It's alright learning how to look good on the ball and have a reasonable range of passing but I’m a big believer in recognising what a player’s strengths are ensuring that we recognise that destructive players are very useful too. Creativity is the one thing that unlocks doors in games and the higher you get to it becomes more important.
Whether people think it or not, the second league in England is a really good league so for youngsters to be able to compete at that level with the games programme being as heavy as it is, is a big ask and players who are doing well have shown some maturity.
I never underestimate the quality of good defenders. They’ve got to be able to defend first, it’s not about having socks over your knees and looking good.
The revolution within academies, is that a positive thing?
Yes, of course it is.
What has been the revolution?
It all happened around the same time as mandatory coaching qualifications coming in. We’ve been playing catchup on the technical side some people would recognise for a while but when you go through those types of events, you’ll be able to remember as most people will when we criticise our national side for trying to play the same foreign teams play and saying that we lost what we are in tempo, aggression, international football is different and club football at the top end is different.
The game evolves whether you like it or not, the players who are successful evolve with the evolution of the game. What doesn’t change is the art of defending. It’s something that we need to make sure we teach as well as unlocking doors too.
Is that something you feel went out of the club?
No, it’s not an observation it’s just my personal opinion and with Brian Tinnion now as our head of the academy, academy director, he’s a realist too. Our academy is in a very strong state, it’s always been very well run, we’ve got players in the system but there will be baron years too and that’s the whole ethos of having a positive academy.
We want to produce players for us, we want them to know what they’re trying to produce there has to be a decent link throughout the club and that’s the case. I don’t need to interfere with anything that’s happening at that end of the building. It’s working very, very well.
On the academy players who have made the step up, with Alex Scott, Antoine Semenyo and Han-Noah Massengo, there’s talk and speculation about where they may or may not play their football next, how do you and how do they as individuals deal with that with social media?
It’s a really good question and it’s one I’m not going to put up the shutters because it’s really important to recognise that players in that sort of position, it’s alright showing maturity on the pitch but just because they are able to reproduce good performances on the pitch it means that they are able to find ways of dealing with that external pressure. That’s one expectation.
For somebody to say they’re not aware of links would be quite a foolish thing to say because they will all be acutely aware and we as a football club have to really think about our own situation as well.
For players who turned down opportunities, Massengo for instance, what we can’t do it get to a point, we’ve been in this situation before as a club, where contracts run down and you end up with speculation about whether they want to stay or don’t want to stay, it creates more negativity than it does positivity.
We are working hard and we continue to work hard to hang onto our best players because that’s how we will progress as a football team. What we can’t do is ignore market forces. If players or their representatives are being very stubborn about it then there comes a threshold when you have to think about getting the best price for that talent because otherwise the investment you’re making in finances and time, is one that somebody else is going to benefit from so that doesn’t change.
That’s not to say that players are going to stay or go, that’s me having a business head on and saying we have to protect our own interests but in the meantime, the players that you have mentioned of our current team and there’s more who will attract interest from other clubs, we want to keep them wherever possible.
Players and agents have increasing, not power, they have various options and it’s natural and quite good because if their agents are being busy elsewhere in trying to drum up some interest, the players might be oblivious of the detail and my view is, they’re our players and they’ll go on our terms.
If we have to lose them, they’ll go on our terms.
That’s important. We don’t want to necessarily be a selling club just to keep afloat because that doesn’t give our fanbase any encouragement. What we’re trying to do is to produce a side that is enjoyable to watch, will be successful and has players that have come through our own system. That’s the ideal world. It may be high in the sky, who cares if it’s high in the sky or not, it’s what we aspire to do.
This current group of players who have either come through our system or have been in our system for a while, they’re very, very promising. There’s promising signs for us but like with every business and football shouldn’t feel like it’s above that, we have to make decisions which are right for the business and what’s important moving forward is that it’s verbalised and that people at least understand what the rational is behind how we operate and that is going to be increasingly important because we’re a bit behind course on where we’d like to be, but there are some encouraging signs too.
Behind course in terms of where the team are at or behind with transfers and strategy?
We’re where we are because the financial situation is what it is. We’ve made better progression in terms of the football side of it with how many people have gone and come in, we’ve made some real progression this year in a footballing sense. What we haven’t done is necessarily turned that into the points we should have but that’s life.
The financial figures that we’re dealing with as a club would also maybe alter the speed of change but you can go through a sluggish six months and then things pick up like we’ve had this year with the effectiveness of some of the young players coming into the side. That’s been really a very, very pleasant outcome, I was going to surprise but whether it’s been a surprise or not, it’s a pleasing outcome.
We’re much better placed than we were 12 months ago, absolutely.
What was Tomas’ problem?
It was a kick. When he came off the pitch I said sit down, he wanted to go back on but it wasn’t worth putting at risk further, an injury that he picked up because we didn’t know what it was at that point. We did alright with 10 men actually. The game fizzled out and Tomas is fine, he’s trained this week and he’s got the singular smile that he has on his face.
In the last few weeks there’s been reports that the club is looking to get a head of recruitment, is that something that you can back up and substantiate?
No, we’re looking to tweak how things work but that’s not on the agenda, no.
You’ve got two good goalkeepers but Harvey Wiles-Richards played well on Tuesday, with players that are there, is he someone that would benefit to being on loan?
Yes possibly but the goalkeeping position is one that you’ve got to give real though to because what I don’t want is one of our goalkeepers going on loan and having splinters on their backside.
If I was taking a player in I couldn’t guarantee that they’re going to play so I would expect the same thing as well.
Will Buse is one of our younger keepers, has been out on loan this season and played 35 games so he’s doing okay.
It’s not an easy one, someone like Max for instance, he needed to play some football this year and if he had not broken into our first team I’m pretty certain that we would have been looking to place him on loan somewhere because otherwise you’ve got a very talented goalkeeper that’s had two years on the sidelines without getting experience and goalkeepers more so than outfield players need to synchronise their timing because it’s all about decision making as a goalkeeper.
You can have a quiet afternoon, have one thing to do and if you get that wrong everybody will remember that and that’s down to conditioning in terms of your mind. To be ready for matches, and to be ready for matches you’ve got to play matches and that’s always the difficult puzzle for any player, but very much so for goalkeepers.
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