Joey, with matches going on in midweek, do you pay much attention to them while they’re happening or do you wait and see what’s happened the next day?
I monitor the results like any other fan, you’re watching and seeing what’s going on. Sometimes, you’re wanting a certain outcome or a certain result and that’s perfectly normal, but no real emotion is attached to it.
If I can get to the stadium and watch them, great. We managed to do that in the week with Mansfield and Forest Green, but most of the time if we’re not playing, you’ll be watching on the iFollow, albeit I tend to turn off pretty quickly because it usually coincides with Champions League footy.
Usually, you give it 10-15 minutes, work out what people are doing and if it’s a crap game, a boring game and I’m not learning anything from it, I’d rather go and watch the Champions League on a Tuesday or Wednesday because that is the apex of the game where you are seeing the best competing against the best.
For me, as a young coach, that’s where you learn the most and that is no disrespect to League Two. I was at a Premier League game last night and there was more football played in our game on Saturday than there was in the Premier League game last night.
I try to watch as much football as I can. If I can get two games in a day, that’s usually my fix for the day. Sometimes I have more than that and I have games on record. I can’t manage to watch them all at the weekend because I’ve got to pay attention to my missus and kids, but I tend to record games.
Tonight, I’ve got two Champions League games from last night to watch and I’ll look forward to watching that and treating myself later. Yesterday, I was at a game and I’ve got the Champions League games from the previous day to watch.
I watch footy all the time. If it’s League Two and our opposition coming up, then great, but usually it’s difficult to get out because you’re playing so many games yourself and it’s only the last few weeks we haven’t been going Saturday, Tuesday, and we’ve been able to pop out and watch the matches live.
Nothing replaces that because you get to see distances between units and things that are happening away from the TV screen should you watch it on iFollow or the broadcaster’s channels.
It’s good that you’re able to switch off from the Rovers situation because for many years of doing this job with different managers, some just can’t deal with the fact that they can’t control everything and they are sat there watching other teams play and not influence anything and not mentally deal with that.
I don’t know, I can only speak for myself. Teams’ results aren’t that important to me, what’s important to me is our results and taking care of what we do and the evolution of our team.
You look at the opposition and you prepare for each opponent and you watch them in the stadium or with the multiple sources we have to watch it nowadays, whether that’s Wyscout or iFollow.
For me, it’s about the evolution of our team’s philosophy of what we’re trying to do. Obviously, you reference the opponent into that because you’re going to play them at the weekend.
Certain pressing structures we were working on for Bradford happened to be something we want to do going forward which is not really including Bradford, it’s the next 6-8 week tactical block that we want to work on to improve our team – pressing, counter-pressing, build-up – and I tend not to be majorly influenced by the opposition, albeit slightly because you’re playing them at set-plays.
But I tend to not focus on what they’re doing; 90-95 per cent of the work we do in the week is about focusing on us and making us better.
Lots of other managers will do it differently. I’ve worked for coaches who will do 50/50, some will even do 80/20 preparing massively for the up-and-coming opponent to nullify them and take their threats away from them.
I am not that way as a coach. I want to focus on developing our team and developing towards the philosophy. It’s a bit of a buzzword in football, bit it is an ideology I have in my mind of how I want the team to play and how I want us to control games. You’re working towards that ideology intermittently during the course of the season.
So how does that manifest itself with this situation you’ve got with a ridiculous number of teams in the top 11 of League Two still in with a chance? Do you map the permutations and think ‘We need X-many points’, or is it just focusing on the next game?
You can control your own destiny by winning games of football. We play Tranmere, Salford, Port Vale, Forest Green, Rochdale and Scunthorpe. If you take maximum points out of each of those games, you control your destiny.
If you think about what other people are doing and other results, you can lose a bit of focus.
For us, it’s about your result and get the best result you can get, and then you can see how that contrasts towards the teams that are in and around you.
If we can get us right and we take as many points as we can between now and the end of the season, the league table will reflect that and we’ll either be promoted or we won’t, based on the work we do in the championship rounds, which is the last six games of the season.
I like the description ‘championship rounds’ there because, particularly this weekend, two of the teams fighting it out – and you’ve mentioned Forest Green and Port Vale – you can’t get away from how big these games are. Do you try to get your players to embrace that?
Yeah, and Salford in the middle of that.
I told you a few weeks ago, we’re lucky. A mate of mine the other day was telling me about this high-stakes gambling guy he knows who would play golf in America and his gig was he’d play golf for £250,000 a round. He said he’d play against anybody off scratch for £250,000, and by the time he got to the 16th, 17th hole, anybody he was playing against was shaking like a s****** dog because they were so nervous and he wasn’t because he was used to playing for that amount of money.
This guy was is a multi-billionaire by the way, but he made his money in gambling. He worked out he was able to control the emotion because he was so used to playing for high stakes all the time and these guys weren’t and they were affected by that.
Why I mention that is it is a cross-reference for us. Every game has been a cup final with absolutely everything on it because of our slow start to the season.
We have felt the pressure for the last three or four months, so we’re well versed in it and every game has got higher stakes attached. I said to the lads it is a privilege to feel pressure, I really do feel to have something on the line like we have. Tranmere are the same, by the way. They have got as much to lose or gain as we have, whereas Bradford last week can play a little bit differently because of the league position and what they have at stake.
For us, there are tight margins in games, but you’ve got to look at Man City and Liverpool and Chelsea in the Champions League. For those guys, every single game, if you draw, it’s catastrophic with the pressure and expectation they’re under and the whole world watching them.
We’ve got a lot of Liverpool fans here and I’m always asking them for Klopp’s programme notes. They’ve been talking about that for a long time and accept pressure being an enormous privilege because it means you’ve got everything to gain and everything to play for.
If you offered me the contrast between this season and last season with everything and nothing, when in the last six games we were in a death spiral, to possibly a really good end to the season for everyone involved at the football club, we’d take this pressure every single moment.
I don’t see it as pressure, but there is a nervousness and expectation. But, as I say, we’ve had this for a long period. This is not the first weekend we’re going to feel this. We’ve had this rumbling on because we’ve been in high-stakes games for the past two months.
Tranmere this weekend, what have you made of them as a team? They have maybe surprised a couple of people.
In the early part of the season, they had an amazing defensive record. Didn’t score a lot of goals but were really solid and found themselves, when they came to the Mem last time, up at the top of the table. They’ve managed to maintain that for large parts of the season and they are still in the mix.
I know Micky Mellon really well and I saw him at the Burnley Everton game last night in passing. He’s a great friend of mine, a really good friend of mine and I’ve known him a long, long time.
Every time we’ve played against his teams, I’ve had a tough game. I’ve never had an easy game against any of his sides. They are always competitive.
I think he is a very underrated coach. The amount of promotions he has had is a testament to the quality of manager he is.
This is another enormous game for us, a really tough game. A great club, Tranmere, on my doorstep with a really big following and they’ll have a passionate fanbase who have got expectations. They are a huge club in the division with a passionate supporter base, big ambition and they’ll want to go up after having a solid season and being right up there all year.
We know this will be a really tough game and every time I play Micky’s sides, we’ve had absolutely nothing but a thorough examination in every single department.
On Saturday, with everything that’s at stake, I expect them to be pressing us right out of the gate. They won’t want us to settle on their pitch, we’ll have a hostile crowd and they are really physical from the set play with Peter Clarke, who played for me at Fleetwood. A superb fella and a top professional who is very dangerous from the set-play.
Tom Davies, who was here in the last few years, I spoke to him in the summer about (why) we weren’t renewing him because I hadn’t seen him and he had some injuries. He’s gone from Barrow to Tranmere and had a really good season. He’ll have a point to prove and want to put one across us.
In the midst of that, Jay Spearing, Callum McManaman, players who have played at a lot higher levels in the game, and Tranmere will be our toughest examination to date.
We’ll find out lots about our football team on Saturday.
Joey, you were at Burnley vs Everton last night. Where do your loyalties lie in that game because you were an Everton fan as a kid but a Burnley hero, winning promotion there?
Bristol Rovers, I wanted Bristol Rovers to win.
I just went to enjoy it. I was coming down the hill and I got the buzz of the night lights at Turf Moor. You come down the hill and see the stadium and the lights are on and I was like ‘Cor, butterflies, am I playing here?’
I would’ve enjoyed playing in that game last night. I still think I could have based on what I saw.
I really enjoyed it, it could have gone either way, the game. If Richarlison doesn’t hit the post and scores, it was probably game over for Burnley, but as Sean Dyche’s teams do, they’re fit, they keep going to the end, they’re committed, they had the crowd behind them and they got themselves back in the game.
At that point, you could see a bit of confidence leave the Everton lads. They haven’t won away for a long period of time and Burnley managed to capitalise on that.
It makes it incredibly tight going into the last few games and it’s tough for us Evertonians.
Who did I want to win? I was as neutral as I could be last night because I’ve got really close ties with them at Burnley, but I don’t want to see Everton leave the division because it’s tough growing young Evertonians on Merseyside and keeping them Evertonians even when they’re in the Prem, so I can’t imagine how tough it’s going to be keeping a young lad in the blue if they go into the Championship.
It’s going to be close, especially after last night. Burnley have put the cat among the pigeons there.
I’m sure you don’t invest too much energy thinking about it, but as an avid watcher of the game, what is going wrong at Everton?
It’s tough. I see Frank (Lampard) doing interviews sometimes and it reminds me of looking in the mirror when I was here last year. You’re at your wits end and you’re doing everything you can to try to get a tune out of people, but ultimately there are a lot of things that have gone on in the background for a long period which have put them on this course that they are on.
I really do feel sorry for them. The lads who have gone in there are fighting tooth and nail and doing everything they can.
They were in a position to win the game last night and don’t capitalise on it. I’ve been there, we’ve been there as a coaching staff last season and it’s incredibly difficult.
Without being in there and seeing what goes on there on a daily basis, it would be absolutely stupid of me to try to tell you what’s gone wrong, but the fact Everton Football Club, who have had the longest stay in the top flight with Arsenal…
Last night’s result and with the fixtures they’ve got coming up and the form they’re on, it would be very worrying for Evertonians.
I’m not speaking to my dad or my uncles because they haven’t got many good things to say about the current group and the last-chance saloon is going to be this next period of games, but they don’t get any easier. You’re looking at Man United, Liverpool, Leicester, Chelsea, Arsenal.
I thought Everton had to pick something up at Burnley, even if it was a point to keep a bit of breathing space between them and Burnley.
I’m worried. I hope they can manage the amount of points to stay up and I hope Burnley can do the same, but they’ve got to get their finger out sharpish.
Tranmere have got a couple of suspensions for this game after finishing the last one with nine men. One of them was Callum MacDonald, who was influential in the game at the Mem and he scored a good goal. What does losing those players take away from them?
MacDonald is a really good player. He and (Kieron) Morris have been big influences on the team. Losing two starting players, you would feel the impact of that.
There will be lads who have been chomping at the bit for an opportunity who’ll get that. He brought (Chris) Merrie, who played in midfield for a large part of the early part of the season, into the team on Saturday.
They’ve just recalled a young boy, a left-back, back from a loan so whether he comes in, I’m not sure, or whether Jay Spearing comes into the middle of the park, whether Callum McManaman comes in to fill in for Morris or (Josh) McPake.
I think it will be 4-4-2, that’s what’s been a success for them. They might try 4-5-1 and press us in a different way, but we’ve worked on a couple of different concepts this morning and if they go this way we’ll do this, if they go that way we’ll do that.
I expect blood and thunder. They’ll be pressing us and rattling our cage, it will be a hostile environment and we’ll have to be at our best to get maximum points.
They’ve got Elliot Nevitt up front, who has jumped a lot of levels very quickly, but he is starting to get used to the level. He scored last week, but he may still be a bit rough around the edges as a player. Does that pose a unique test for defenders that he may be a bit erratic in terms of his movements?
He’s earned the right to be a professional player. He was at Warrington Rylands, which is not far from where I live, and he scored a lot of goals and took them to Wembley.
He deservedly got a chance in the Football League and it will always take you a bit of time to acclimatise.
All of a sudden, you’re not going to work and you’re training. Some people take to it like a duck to water but some people don’t and they need a bit of an adjustment period.
It looks like with Elliot, he’s settled into that role and if we’re going to be successful on Saturday, the same way we did with Andy Cook last weekend, we’re going to have to nullify the threat of (Kane) Hemmings and Nevitt or Nicky Maynard if he comes in.
For us, when you’re on the run we’re on and you’re in the mode we’re in, you look forward to those challenges. Tranmere have got some good players and are a well-drilled unit, but we’re a really good team as well.
Will you have Antony Evans and Nick Anderton available to you?
Hopefully.
Josh Grant and Jon Nolan?
Jon Nolan is back on the grass today and it might come a little bit too close for Jon, but Josh has had a full week of training and is back in the mix.
Finally, what did you learn from your trip to Nailsworth to see Forest Green and Mansfield? Since the second month of the season, Mansfield have been in incredible form and Forest Green have always been right up there. Was it a high-quality game for the level and what did you learn?
That sausage rolls don’t always have sausage in them. That’s what I learned.
Any major takeaways you can share from what you saw because you do play Forest Green and Mansfield could theoretically be a play-off opponent if that’s the route you end up having to take?
Yeah, the chips and gravy was decent. I was surprised because gravy usually has a meat thing, but I don’t think they would have done that.
Football-wise, absolutely nothing I didn’t already know. It gave me even more confidence for how we’re moving and what we’re doing.
Ben Garner was sitting a few rows down and I think we were happy with the result. I think everybody sitting outside the top one wanted Forest Green to get a result because it kept it really tight and Mansfield had games in hand.
It’s going to come down to goal difference, maybe one point here or there, whether you’re in the play-offs or you miss out.
For us, everybody in that promotion-chasing pack would quite happily see Forest Green win that type of game and it keeps the chasing group competitive.
Football-wise, nothing I didn’t already know having played both of the sides already this season.
It’s a tricky pitch at Forest Green and the stadium is not conducive, it was quite windy for a total football game and at the stage of the season we’re at, the result is the most important thing.
The sending off massively changed the game. If that didn’t happen, I think it might have been a lot tighter, but as it is Forest Green have given themselves an enormous opportunity of getting out of the division with that result. It was a big result for him.
Joey, were there many discussions about keeping Tom Davies at the football club?
I spoke to Tom and offered him the opportunity to come back in pre-season. I hadn’t seen him and he had a similar problem with his knees to what Ali Koiki had, so he had some knee surgery.
For the way I wanted to play in terms of being aggressive in the defensive phase, I felt mobility was going to be key.
Tom was struggling for a regular rhythm. Even at Barrow, he’d play one week and then he’d miss a few games and I didn’t feel I could offer him a contract based on that performance profile.
But when I spoke to him on the phone, I was very impressed with him. He was very confident in his ability and what he felt he could offer. I offered him the opportunity to come back in pre-season and show me what he could do.
He obviously got a good move in the midst of that and you wish him nothing but the best.
I imagine on Saturday he’ll be wanting to show, but it’ll be more to do with how his season’s going rather than proving me right or wrong.
It was one of them where, unfortunately, you can’t keep everybody and there were decisions to be made. I wanted more information and Tom got a different opportunity, so it’s worked out well for us. We’ve got a good side and he’s in a good side and playing, so really good for him.
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