Jordan Rossiter, is he in the running to play?
No, Jordy won’t be ready. We can’t risk him just as yet so hopefully we’ll assess him for the weekend but Tuesday’s game comes a little bit too soon.
It will be the same group. The A-team is the only team. We don’t have a B team or a C team or anything like that. You saw on the bench on Saturday there are a lot of young boys on there.
We’re a tight-knit group at the minute. Last Monday, we trimmed that group that was already short and we cut away what we felt was deadwood. Now we’ve got a very small tight-knit group.
There will possibly be some changes on Tuesday but there will also be a lot of players who played on Saturday who will play in that game.
I know you want to win every game to build confidence and momentum, but where does this competition rank for you in terms of importance? Is it different for you this year because last year you had that sense that promotion was everything; this year you talk about 52 points, is a cup run something of more importance to you this year?
I think for us the priority is the status in the division. We’ve got to build again.
It would be nice to have a cup run and we haven’t got a lot of options so we will be playing as strong a team as we can, but for us it would be great. We just want to win games of football.
We don’t have the luxury to rotate 15 players and give people moments. We’ll be going to Crawley to put our best foot forward and try to progress in the competition and continue that winning momentum.
Does the change of competition give you a chance to take a few more risks in selection?
Possibly, we’ll do that. We’ll assess the boys and see how they’ve come out of the game from Saturday and make a call from there.
We don’t have many, many options so there will be lots of lads who will take to the field in the Crawley game and hopefully we can have another positive performance and result.
How much do you know of Crawley?
I watched them against Carlisle yesterday. Mangs is really good mates with Richie Wellens so they were beaten by Leyton Orient on Saturday.
It looks like they’ve been really possession dominant like they were in the Carlisle game. Kevin (Betsy) has come out of Arsenal under-23s so he’s learning his craft as a manager.
I’ll get down and watch the Leyton Orient game at some point to reaffirm it in my mind, but it will be more about what Crawley are going to do to handle us as opposed to what we’re going to do to handle Crawley, with the greatest respect to them.
After a win on Saturday, that is the sort of impetus you want to take into a long trip on a Tuesday night, isn’t it?
Yeah, for sure. Winning breeds confidence, so the quicker we could get the first win on the board as a new team in the division, the better for us.
To do it away from home and do it with a bit of aplomb is nice. There is lots of stuff we need to work on, where we can try to improve and get better, but we’ve got a cup tie in front of us on Tuesday. It’s a little bit of a distraction in terms of the league, but want to maintain that winning momentum.
How much work will you do on Monday? Will it be a warm-down session and a bit of analysis before getting on the bus?
We’ve got a process in place where the lads who didn’t play on Saturday will go a lot harder. The lads will be out on the grass on Monday, we’ll do a bit of Crawley-specific work from what we see from them.
We’ll travel Monday night and stay in a hotel. Tuesday morning, we’ll do a bit of work on the video meetings and the screens on how we’re going to approach the game.
The key is filling the lads’ tanks full of energy again to give a 90-minute performance.
Have you ever come across Kevin Betsy before?
I haven’t, no, so I’ll look forward to meeting him and it sets up for a nice cup tie.
They’ll be desperate to kickstart their season, but also we want to win another game of football.
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