Joey, Anssi Jaakkola had a dead leg on Wednesday. How’s he pulling up?
He hasn’t trained today, but we think he’ll be alright. There are a couple with bumps and bruises that haven’t gone out today, but we expect them to train tomorrow.
Hopefully, he’s fine. He’s limping a bit, but he’s a big, tough Finn. He should be OK with a bit of a bruise.
Is Jed Ward still injured?
Jed’s back training. He hasn’t long been back training and you would want him to have a bit more game practice, but if required to fill Anssi’s shoes I think he’ll be ready.
Just looking at your form, it’s one defeat in the past 12 now. Are you feeling that momentum is starting to build? How does it feel in the squad?
We were a bit frustrated that we hadn’t taken more points because we felt some of the performance levels were better than the points total and the league position.
We had to learn lessons and a level of improvement that we showed last time out in the league against Peterborough. I thought it was our most mature, controlled performance of the season, certainly at home, and I felt we needed to show that level of consistency in terms of not making mistakes and giving the opposition goals. We needed to show a meanness in the defensive aspect.
Wednesday night was similar. We probably should have closed that game out and that was the frustrating element, we allowed them to score a goal when we really should have been controlling it.
But I think it points to key personnel and it shows you how important your Lewis Gibson and Jordan Rossiter types are because that defensive platform is a group effort, it isn’t just one or two individuals and I think Gibbo’s performances certainly bring a calmness and composure to everyone around him, and Lewis Gordon as well.
For us, this disappointing thing was conceding a goal on Wednesday night. We want to be a lot more frugal in the defensive area.
You had issues with injuries earlier in the season and it made it difficult to have those partnerships, but now whether you’re looking at the strikers or the centre-backs, all over the pitch you are starting to see those relationships developing and players are playing more instinctively.
The team is starting to settle in. We had a tricky time with injuries at the start of the season and thankfully that has curtailed.
The group has started to bed in and it’s becoming a lot simpler to pick a team now. For a matchday, there is less disruption and change, even when we made six changes on Wednesday because it was a cup competition.
You want that flow and the quicker you know your strongest XI, the better. That usually points to a productive results profile, you don’t have to make many tweaks and changes.
The sooner that beds in, the better. It usually means the team is going on a good run and it’s no coincidence that as the group has become more settled, the results have picked up as well.
Are you in your own mind there in terms of if you had a cup final tomorrow, you know your team?
Yeah, that’s this week, but it’s always subject to change and form. You get people who aren’t in a good vein of form and naturally they come out of that and suddenly they’re pushing hard.
The good thing this year is we’ve got competition in terms of there are probably seven or eight players who have emerged in the last period and taken the jersey as their own property, but on the other side of that, there is enough competition for places within that.
Whilst you’re in the cup competitions, it gives you a chance to look at the other options, whereas if you are just solely in the league, you tend to go strongest XI followed by the strongest XI. With the cup because of the proximity to the league campaign, it can allow you to utilise your squad and create opportunities for other people.
Boreham Wood are from a couple of levels below but last year they showed they are more than capable of bloodying a few noses.
Yeah, absolutely, and we’ll have to be fully focused and wired in, which I expect us to be. If we are and we handle the occasion in the correct manner, the favouritism of the tie will be on us and rightly so.
For us, it’s about taking care of our performance, taking care of our output, and unfortunately for Boreham Wood, if we function and play well, they are going to struggle to progress in the cup, but that is entirely in our control and we have to make sure we turn up and professionally dispose of lower-league opposition in the cup.
As a proud Englishman, I’m sure you’ve been watching events in Qatar and England vs Iran on Monday. What have you made of the first week of the World Cup?
It’s been decent. A good start for England made even better by Iran’s result today. If England beat the USA this evening, it looks like they’re going to be in a really strong position, which might allow them to rotate a little bit for the final group game because I think freshness is key.
But also I think it’s shown again, and the FA Cup will also show it, if you’re not quite at your level of performance, whether you’re Argentina against the Saudis or you’re Wales against Iran, you will lose games of football.
For our players and for me, it’s the contrast of the styles. You have the ability to see teams who are superior play against inferior options and what they do. The Spanish being the prime example of that with the level of control they had the other night. I thought it was a masterclass in the manipulation of the football and I saw a few pundits speaking about ‘How are Spain going to score?’ Before the game.
You see the quality of personnel. You look at the French and their depth, even with their injuries, and I think it’s wide open. Brazil last night, Argentina lose to Saudi, I felt Argentina might’ve had a chance this year.
I just think it’s the most wide-open World Cup we’ve seen.
Joey, I guess the takeaway from Wednesday’s game is in cup competitions, you can’t allow teams to gain confidence, either by them by playing well, or in Wednesday’s case, by you missing chances. You can’t allow teams to stay in games and that is what you’re going to have to exercise on Saturday.
Yeah, for sure. While it’s 1-0, everyone’s got a chance. People don’t roll over and get their bellies tickled, everyone’s competitive regardless of what league you’re playing in. You want to win games of football and if one team is a little bit complacent or wasteful in terms of its finishing, you’ll always leave yourself open to that sucker-punch.
On Wednesday, we were in control of the game and without getting that second goal, you always leave that opportunity for the opposition to get back into it.
Credit to our lads, we didn’t rest on our laurels and it would have been easy to accept the lottery of a shootout, but they went and found a way to win the game.
Last-minute winners do nothing but fill the group with confidence, especially when there have been changes to the starting XI and we’re getting minutes into lads.
Cup football, as we’ve seen from the Rochdale game and the Colchester game, is about getting into the next round and progressing. We did that on Wednesday night and got a home draw in the next round.
On Sunday, we’re hoping we can get a positive result and a positive performance and make sure we’re in the hat for the third-round draw on Monday.
I suspect Glenn Whelan would have played on Wednesday if not for that suspension because Sam Finley and Antony Evans have had a big workload. Is this a game you think Glenn could come in and you can give someone like Sam or Antony the afternoon off?
Yeah, it would have been. It’s a blow because we would have Paul Coutts and Glenn to rotate. We had six midfielders, but there are a couple out at the minute and it makes it trickier.
It kind of emphasises that we need to strengthen in certain areas. Whelo is not going to last forever. He’s a phenomenal pro but we want to help him develop his coaching.
Certainly, by the time we get to next year, we’re hoping Glenn is in the coaching room and not taking to the pitch.
I don’t think it’s fair on him. When you’ve been a player and you get to his age, you want regular football. Not playing for five or six weeks and then getting thrown in, it isn’t fantastic, and all the while he trains like a demon but nothing keeps you in shape and in rhythm like playing does, certainly when you get north of 30.
Harry Anderson and Paul Coutts, how far away are they from returning?
H was back on the grass today, albeit with the S&C lads. He doesn’t look a million miles away, he was moving OK.
Couttsy is telling me he wants to get out on the grass next week and start running, but the physio hasn’t told me yet. We’re hoping it’s a couple of weeks before he joins back in, rather than any longer, but we’ll have to take that stage by stage.
What does the FA Cup mean to you? Talk me through your memories as a fan and as a player.
I can remember the 1989 cup final. There were street parties in our road, with Liverpudlians on one side of the street and Evertonians on the other and the whole road was shut down. As an Evertonian, that wasn’t a phenomenal memory because I think we took the lead in the game and ended up losing 2-1.
As a 13 or 14-year-old, I was at Everton at the time, I remember going to the 1995 cup final when Graham Stuart hit the bar and Paul Rideout put in the rebound and we beat a really good Man United side that day.
I remember everything about it, the BBC in the morning with the build-up to the game. That, for me, was the dream as a kid, to win an FA Cup for the team you supported, or a World Cup for England. Those were the two ambitions; the European cups, as you get a bit older you realise the prestige attached to them, but everyone growing up wanted to score in the cup final.
The number of goals in cup finals or semi-finals I scored in our back garden was ridiculous. You were always visualising and channelling those cup-final moments.
It’s an iconic trophy and they’ve done their best to ruin it over the years and they’ve had a right good go at it.
We’ve got four league places and I think they should take the fourth league position and make the FA Cup winner play in the Champions League. I don’t see how they can create that level of prestige it once had.
It was the only competition to win, it was more prestigious than the league when you speak to people from the 1950s and 1960s. It was the competition.
They’ve lost that connection now. If you offered someone fourth in the league or winning the FA Cup, they would say fourth in the league because it gets you the money and the Champions League prestige.
But the only way I feel the competition can be salvaged is the winner getting into the Champions League. I think that would make the competition as good as it once was, but there is absolutely no chance they’ll do it because there is too much money involved.
It’s an incredible competition for lower-league clubs when the big clubs treat it with the disdain that they do. I think Man United ruined it when they played in the Club World Cup and not in the FA Cup.
I think the FA have to take a lot of responsibility in that because there should have been some flexibility to allow them to play in it, or some sanction for doing what they did. From that point on, it’s been viewed differently by the generations that have come after that.
As you say, for lower-league clubs it is still a big deal and Josh Coburn is the inspiration to the whole squad. His breakthrough moment at Middlesbrough was a goal to win a third-round tie against Spurs. There is that carrot for your players that if they get through this weekend, who knows who you could play.
That’s what I said to them before the game against Rochdale. I said ‘It’s your competition’.
Some managers at this level probably drive it on a little bit more because it’s their chance to get in the limelight as well, to raise their profile, and that’s the last thing I need, obviously.
I said to the lads the league campaign is our bread and butter, the Papa John’s we’ve flicked in because we’re in the knockout stage and we’ve changed our mindset towards it, whereas the FA Cup is solely for our players and it’s a chance for them to test themselves against high-level opposition if you’re fortunate enough or good enough to get through to that stage.
But there is no pressure from me. ‘If you want to have a good cup run, crack on and get after it’. If we don’t perform, I’ll be gutted, clearly, but I won’t be chewing them out like the league because for me this season, the league is our absolute priority.
We’ve got a good opportunity to get into the third round and we’ll all be frustrated should we not maximise it.
Joey, you mentioned about Boreham Wood’s form coming into the game. Is that something you take into consideration, or are the league and cup two separate things?
Yeah, if they were flying going in…
They’ll be looking at our form and they will be concerned because in the past 12-15 games, there has been a marked improvement. Similarly for them, I think they’ve had a half-decent start, but they lost last time out at Halifax and they’ve had some difficult moments.
Progressing past Eastleigh in the cup has been the bright spot and they’ll welcome it as a distraction, but we all know how important form is. It’s nice to have the distraction of a cup competition, but if you’re not playing particularly great football, the FA Cup doesn’t just turn up and give you a bout of confidence.
For them, they’ll feel the pressure is off and it is a chance for them to take another scalp, which they showed last year they are more than capable of doing.
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