Joey, in terms of bumps and bruises, is the squad as it was in terms of availability?
Yeah, pretty much. We just had a little setback with Harry Anderson and it hasn’t settled. He’s going to require a little bit of surgery, which will take him out for four weeks or something like that.
It is a bit of a blow for H, he’s had a bit of a stop-start season.
Apart from that, we’ve got Ryan Loft returning from suspension and pretty much a healthy group to select from.
If I’ve read it right, neither Jarell Quansah nor Lamare Bogarde had won a senior game until last Saturday. Just to give that to them to say ‘I’ve got my first three points’, that is a big deal.
Yeah, it’s a big marker. The quicker you get it, the quicker you settle. They are two lads who are probably more used to winning, playing for Liverpool and Aston Villa, certainly with their respective strength at the level.
That’s what they come here for. They have come here to get out of their comfort zone and not have everything on their own terms and see if they can adjust and apply themselves and get better through that kind of adversity.
Both of them have grown and grown. Jarell has been unfortunate in terms of his personal performances have been enough to be on the winning team, but we play a team sport and we haven’t quite fired on all cylinders as a team.
He’s had to be patient, but for us with the tough spell we’ve come through and we are going to have some tough moments going forward, it’s not going to be straightforward because we’ve got some good teams to play, you get to see how each other is in the adversity and out of the comfort zone.
If you make it through the adversity, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and there have been some really positive signs in recent weeks. They have managed show themselves in a good performance at Oxford and that gives a week to build on that and, hopefully, against one of the better sides in the division, a great opportunity to showcase that in front of our fans.
It’s not only the young kids that have to go through that sometimes. James Belshaw has had an amazing time since coming to the club and was dropped for the first time and had a difficult few weeks, but he’s come back and played his part in keeping a clean sheet.
Absolutely. In our game, if you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse. You can’t stand still and you have constantly got to keep improving.
You hear me talk about Kaizan all the time and you see the word banded about, but it is something I genuinely believe in. You are not going to be the best in the world or perfect, but what you can do is be better than you were yesterday.
If everybody has that approach and works as much as they can towards that, invariably you make progress and you get better. If there is resistance or a mindset that doesn’t think you need to improve, then that holds you back.
In team sports, if you go onto the pitch, you are only ever as strong as your weakest link and good opposition will find that and exploit that, or they will get you under enough pressure where that comes to the fore and they will take advantage of it.
For us, we want competition and the key is, the rent is always due. It’s never yours. You might win last week but if you don’t turn up and do all the basics that we did really well at Oxford and compete and win our first and second contacts, Barnsley are a really good side and they are full of confidence.
They have got to win themselves because they are looking at gate-crashing the promotion party, and as Derby found out last week, they are a very good team and we need to be at our best to take maximum points.
The front end of your team has performed well this season and you have scored a lot of goals. That had dipped off and the fact you got a couple of them back on the scoresheet last weekend might give them the hit of confidence that could make that split-second difference at the weekend.
Yeah, and we’ve seen how much goals change games. We get the first goal on Saturday and you see a bit of confidence drain out of the division. That’s the same.
Barnsley are going really well and if you find yourself in front of them, they have to win the game because Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth and Ipswich are at the top end there and the pace they are keeping and the expectation on them is to be part of that picture.
From our perspective, we have got to be solid. We have got to be really difficult to beat because that gives us the opportunity with the front side of the team we have got.
We have got firepower with Aaron and I think John Marquis did superbly last week without getting on the scoresheet. Obviously, the other forward in Scotty (Sinclair) did.
We have been fortunate in terms of the front side of our team has given us a right chance because of its ability to get goals and keep us in games. Recent weeks, they haven’t quite fired on all cylinders and there are reasons for that, and we felt the pressure of that because the goals dried up, that was putting pressure on the other part of the team.
Thankfully for us on Saturday, and I think we’ve done it in recent weeks – Ipswich I draw down to – we have shown a solid defensive structure, which then gives the frontside of the team the opportunity to win the game because we’ve got goals in the team.
Barnsley are a top side and we are going to have lots of moments where we don’t have it all our own way and we must stick together through that adversity knowing we have got a sting in the tail for every single team in this division.
A couple of familiar faces in Bobby and Luke Thomas are coming back. It is always good to see people, but less so for the 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.
LT had a really good year with us, albeit he didn’t show as much on the grass as he would like to. He was certainly well thought of in the group and I know he made a lot of friends, probably for the rest of his life here. He’s such a good kid.
Bobby did really well for us. I can’t knock Bobby’s contribution and we’ve certainly missed him since he went to Barnsley. I think he’s helped them and losing him as late in the window as we did hurt us.
But also, on the other side of that, we managed to get Jarell and if you offered me either of them at the start of the season, I would have taken Jarell. As it was, we couldn’t get access to him and Bob came in and did great.
In deciding to go to Barnsley, he looks like the savant, really. He’s made the best call, he’s gone there and we lost pretty much every game afterwards, and they picked up and went on.
He’s got a right chance of getting promoted with Barnsley, so for him it worked out well.
We were disappointed to lose him because we felt a lot of the mistakes that young players make, he’d made in our team so somebody is always going to benefit from that. We thought we had made it through the adversity with him, so it would be natural for us to want to capitalise on that.
As it was, Michael Duff knows him from Burnley and has managed to take him up there.
It will be nice to see Duffo, he was in the team with us when we won the Championship (with Burnley), albeit he didn’t play as much as he would have liked to because the team went on a 23-game unbeaten run and won the division.
But he was a massive part of that and I think he did a phenomenal job at Cheltenham which earned him the opportunity to go to Barnsley and I think he has done a brilliant job again. They are a really good side, really good at what they do and they make it very difficult for you as Derby found out at the weekend and we will have to be at our best to take maximum points.
Joey, just a bit more on Harry Anderson if you can. What is the injury?
It’s his groin. I don’t know if he’s got a hernia rumbling on. He’s come back to training and he is not quite moving right.
He’s seen the specialist and they say they are going to operate in the morning to get him back with games to spare.
It’s a nightmare for H, he’s had lots of setbacks with it, but unfortunately sometimes you have got to go under the surgeon’s knife and that is the only way to resolve an issue to get you back near 100 per cent.
What does his future look like with the club because he is out of contract in the summer? Do you see a role for him here beyond that?
Yeah, I really like Harry. I think he is a great team man.
We had a conversation with him in and around Christmas and we didn’t manage to get the signature on the contract, and then subsequently he has had a couple of injuries.
We are still speaking and talking to him and, for me as a manager, I am really keen to keep Harry with the group and part of the squad, but that will depend on how fit he can stay and how long he is going to be on the treatment table.
He has had a bit of a disrupted season and from Harry’s perspective, his missus is pregnant and he’s wanting a bit of stability, but obviously, from the club’s perspective we can’t sign people who are injured and keep getting injured.
There is a bit of a Mexican standoff at the minute. We are really keen on keeping Harry as part of the group, we think he has got lots still to offer and we are just working through that to see how it pans out in the next few weeks.
Up front, Aaron has been ever present, but the other central strikers, it's been a bit of a revolving door. It's John's turn at the moment; Ryan has admitted before it takes him a bit of a while playing games to get back to his best; and with Josh (Coburn), it looks like he's been a bit short of a gallop with a knee problem... how are they both building up to force their way in?
Lofty has had a bit of a disappointment in getting sent off in the Lincoln game, missing further games and he's a game player, so the more he plays the more he is knocked in. The enforced lay-off doesn't help him at all.
Josh just had a bit of an issue with his patella tendon, he wasn't moving right. John, luckily for us, caught a bit of a form and gave us that platform to play off. Scores his goal in the game against Burton, in what wasn't a fantastic performance but I thought he did enough to keep his shirt. He's then backed that up with being really solid and did such a good job for the team against Oxford.
There were a couple of tactical messages in there and John had to sacrifice some of the things he normally would do for the team, and he did that incredibly well for 70 minutes and gave us a fantastic platform.
I just think he's been kicking his heels all season; Josh, Aazza and Lofty have all had the lion's share of minutes and he's had to be patient as a senior striker and his professionalism, his attitude.
Honestly, he's been remarkably good from the noises we heard about him, what everybody said about him, to the man I've found, he's been first class. We're now at the point where people are fighting for jerseys and people who are playing well stay in the jersey and John is playing fantastically well for the team and Josh has now got to get himself fully fit, which he's getting, and get himself back in the starting XI.
When he plays in that front three, it seems like the players around him must absolutely love him because he's unselfish, he does a lot of hard work and he connects the game up?
He's adapted his game. If you look at John just physically, compared to when we signed him, he's accepted the role he's going to play here and he's changed his training programme to make himself better at that; he's got a completely different outlook to the way he uses the gym.
If you watch our training sessions there's one man, every single day, who stays behind to do extra and that's John Marquis. Constantly harassing the coaches. He's a shining example of if it's not going well for you, some lads are very quick off the training ground, in the car, sulking, go home and moan to the missus or the agent; gaffer's not picking them. John hasn't done any of that. John's gone, 'okay, I'm not in favour, am I? Right, I'm going to train even harder, going to do my extra, and I'm going to be ready when the opportunity presents itself'.
He's been now rewarded for his excellent attitude and I'm really, really pleased with his contribution to our team. Certainly in recent weeks he's been massive for us and long may that continue.
Aaron seems to be getting more attention, particularly from the Welsh press at the moment. Do you think he's conditioned to deal with the extra scrutiny?
I dunno, he's a good looking lad, isn't he? I don't think Aazza looks like a shrinking violet to me. You only had to see what the lad posted on Gloucester Road last year, I don't think he's one to disappear into the shadows.
All good strikers will have that belief, that kind of strut in the walk. It's a tough job that they do but it's why we pay fortunes for them and they're worth their weight in gold. They are quirky, absolutely, some of the stuff he comes into training wearing, honestly, it's very very peculier. But it works.
He's quite aloof, his character but he's such a nice lad and really works hard at his game. The thing that gets missed with Aaron is how resilient he is. The amount of time he gets fouled and you don't see him moaning. He gets up, dusts himself down and goes again.
When we first picked him up he was kind of 'non-league Jack Grealish' was what people said, but for me to see him see the goal he gets on Saturday - it's a proper striker's goal., He didn't have that capability when we found him and the work that's been done with the coaches but, also more importantly, the work that Aazza's done on his own game has now given him 10/15 of those simpler goals.
We all know he's got shooting ability in both feet to score from distance but I always believe really good strikers are based on what they do in that penalty area. And the really good ones, what they do in the six-yard box. And he's added those bits to his game and I think if he keeps adding to his game - and we're now saying he can use his head - that's a scoring apparatus that we can develop.
He scored a header in training on Tuesday and one on Thursday and you're like, 'okay, Aazza, the penny's dropping'. So he can score left foot, right foot and if we can get the head in there, he starts to become a more complete striker.
He's still developing his game, I think strikers kind of come into their own at 25/26, so we've got him at a good time. How long we're going to have him for, who knows? Especially if he gets called up by Wales and he keeps scoring but that's great for our club; we took a 24-year-old free transfer from League Two - and he's done fantastically well for our team and been a great team person and contributed massively - and the club has an opportunity, if we can command a decent transfer fee to reinvest in the future and the next prospect to come for the quartered jersey.
From when you played Barnsley before, they pose some stylistic challenges for you with the way they play. They might make you think you are playing well because you’ve got the ball, but they are very good at pressing, counter-pressing and nicking it off you and they will also turn you. Those are things you have probably struggled with. They are back to front quite quickly, if not long ball, so how do you prepare for that?
You are absolutely right to point that out and it is a huge part of the learning we need to get better at.
There is no tougher opposition for us at this moment in time. They are really good at what they do. Duffo, from Burnley, is 5-3-2, but it’s very much 4-4-2 when they come hunting the ball, they are really aggressive with the numbers, the distances are very good between the units, they set great pressing traps and if you don’t figure them out, they can make life incredibly uncomfortable for you.
We found out when we were up there and we lost 3-0, Derby are a good side and they found out when they went there at the weekend. We have to stick to our gameplan and our strategy.
They are rightly where they are in the form table. Duffo has done another really good job, very similar to what he did with Cheltenham but with, no disrespect to Cheltenham, slightly more marquee players for the division because a club of Barnsley’s side allow you to do that.
I would love for them to get it down and pass it because that suits us, we can press it, but they aren’t that type of team. They will play if the game presents and they get themselves in the lead, and they have got a lot of competent players in Herbie Kane, Luca Connell and Adam Phillips in there.
(James) Norwood and Devante Cole are hustle-bustle, a handful for the level and a good partnership, and they have three big centre-halves and (Nicky) Cadden at left wing-back and (Jordan) Williams at right wing-back, who are well versed in what they do.
Duffo is a Sean Dyche disciple and he has taken what Dychey is good at and put his own spin on it and it has been really successful for him.
After the weekend’s game, I don’t think we will face a tougher team. That’s mindful that we’ve got to play Plymouth and Bolton, but I think this is our toughest game of the season.
Finally, I know you took in a game this week at Wembley. Did you make a trip behind enemy lines to see another of your former clubs?
No, I had tickets, but when I found out where my tickets were, they were in the Man City end behind the goal, and I thought I’d either get egged by the Bristol City fans or harassed by the Man City fans. I’m not sure either way, whether they are fans of the Aguero moment or the two or three years I kept them in the Premier League virtually single-handedly.
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