What sort of challenge will you face against Sheffield Wednesday?
I think they’re going well. I think they’ve gone to a back three. They’ve got some really talented boys. Josh Windass, played with me and Jordy at Rangers - he’s a talented kid. Obviously, (in the) frontline, (Michael) Smith the boy from Rotherham and Lee Gregory. And then the quality that Barry Bannan and Will Vaulks in the middle will produce.
So, top side, but Hillsborough will be full… then again, it’s on Sky so I don’t know. But they’ll be expected to beat us - newly promoted team - and we’ll go there with a spring in our step because of the second half here (against Plymouth) but also with absolutely no fear. We’re going there to attack them and we’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose.
You’ll want your players to relish the occasion - big club, historic stadium - rather than be intimidated?
I can’t bear can’t bear the stadium because of Liverpool in 1989. It gives a really bad feeling when I go in it because you can’t help but be affected by it.
Sheffield is a fantastic football city and I love Sheffield Wednesday as a club, they are massive underachievers in terms of they were a huge club when I was a kid and I can remember them being in FA Cup finals and always being in the Premier League. It’s a great city, Sheffield, with two really good football clubs.
We’ll go to the memorial and put some flowers down and pay our respects. Hopefully, we can turn in a big performance, but it’s one of the few stadiums that I would rather not visit.
Have you taken Fleetwood there before? Is that something you always do?
Yeah, we’ve played there but when you walk down the Leppings Lane End, it’s just eerie because it’s the scene of a crime.
In terms of where you’re at, how important was the result against Plymouth and performance to be able to go to Wednesday and Derby and feel confident you can get something?
We watched Derby vs Ipswich on Friday night and we’ve had a tussle with Ipswich, so we know their qualities. We know these big sides.
It’s a helluva lot different looking at the fixture list and seeing a trip to Pride Park and a trip Hillsborough, rather than Crawley and Stevenage and big Steve Evans charging up and down the touchline.
He’s commented this week, hasn’t he, him? It must’ve been in between screaming at officials. He’s commented that we were lucky or something like that.
He said something like it wasn’t right for football, I hope I’m not misquoting him but you read it? Did that rile you?
I haven’t read it, I’ve just heard about it. I don’t know why, it’s bizarre. He won’t want to help Jon (Brady, Northampton boss). Jon doesn’t like me anyway and I don’t think he will send me a Christmas card.
Steve is entitled to his opinion. There’s nothing wrong with what he said. We’re up now, so tough s*** on that one.
And, again, for us we’re looking at some glamour ties; Sky on a Wednesday night. I will have to get my teeth whitened, a bit of hair dye in and blond highlights and all that.
I’m looking forward to taking our team to some good stadiums and our fans to some good stadiums because - I must mention this - how good were they on Saturday? It felt like there was 20,000 in.
Yozzer (Mark Hughes, Plymouth assistant) and Steve (Schumacher, Plymouth head coach) have come in there and they were like, ‘we were really worried because of the atmosphere and our players were rattled by it’.
There’s not as many as we could get in if we ad more seats but certainly the atmosphere and the energy that came here was brilliant and I can’t thank them enough.
How much of a consideration is the fact the game is on TV? A lot of your players, some of them, Jordan Rossiter for example, have played on TV every week, but some of them have probably never played a live game on Sky. Do you have to manage that at all, or is it trust them to deal with it and take it in their stride?
I guarantee you there will be a few new haircuts, beards shaped up and all that kind of thing. That’s what tends to happen when you know the TV cameras are there.
It’s just another step in the right direction for our football club. The fact that, the Gas are on Sky. From where we were and the doldrums we were in, I just think for everybody involved in the club - fans, players, people who care about Rovers - it’s just another good step in the right direction for us.
I think we’ve got 700/800 tickets sold which is great on a Wednesday night and Christmas isn’t far around the corner, and the game’s on Sky. And then I think we’ve done 2,500 for Derby. For me, we’re a young group, and these lads… they’re just going to learn, even if it doesn’t quite go to plan. They’re going to learn so much in this period which will stand us in good stead for the challenges that we want.
I’m excited because this is where we want to be, not scrapping about in League Two in the unglamorous stadiums that you get there. In the proper stadiums against the biggest, established clubs and taking the game to them.
It’s the price you pay for being on TV, but the game was moved to Wednesday. Derby have an extra day’s recovery, is there any frustration on your part about that, given you have two long-ish away trips? If you were Jurgen Klopp, you’d probably be pretty angry about it…
Yeah, he’s angry about everything at the minute! It is what it is. Sometimes it’s a little bit kinder to one team over the other. For us, there’s nothing we can do about it and we just have to get on with it. We have time to prepare and we’re looking forward to the challenge.
Ryan Loft might have something to say on this, based on current form, but Barry Bannan is probably the consensus pick for the best player in League One in terms of the strings he pulls…
Only if he gets time.
You’ve got someone like Jordan Rossiter who played as an 8 against Plymouth, rather than a 6; is that something you can look to do to get him higher up the pitch and on their playmaker?
I’ve played against Barry a number of times, he’s a fantastic player, real great quality. Even better when you give him time on the ball. But, like most players, if you don’t allow them respect or the time and space to play, you can nullify them.
So we’ll go with a plan. We know they’re a good team, and they’ve got some good players. Bannan’s on, what, 30 grand a week or something like that? So you’d expect him to be a quality operator at the level but we’ll have a plan and sometimes if you get a collection of talented individuals and they run into a really good team it can throw up great things for the lesser mortals.
We’re going to Sheff Wed, who are an enormous club, in the football pyramid and we get an opportunity to take a big step in the right direction as a football club.
Does the performance against Plymouth, when you put Harry Anderson at right-back in the second half; does that inspire you that you can go toe-to-toe from the off at a place like Hillsborough?
I’ll have a watch of them. They played a back three on Saturday. They may revert back to fours, as they’ve been doing. But we’ll go with a plan and it probably won’t be the same plan as Plymouth because we were 2-0 down at half-time!
But we feel we have enough in our group to pose problems and the key for me will be handling the occasion, handling the atmosphere and with Hillsborough, if they get their tails up and the crowd get with them, that might cause us a number of problems.
But if we can take the crowd away from them and create some angst in the stadium then sometimes a big crowd, as we know here from last year, can work against you.
The great form you’ve had though has given you a platform to go there and relish it. Six wins on the bounce, you go there in a completely different position to when you first started looking ahead to this run of fixtures…
Everything that life throws at you is an opportunity or a threat. And it’s just how you perceive it. Being 2-0 down at half-time, is it a threat we could get beat four or five or is it an opportunity to write another little chapter in the club’s folklore?
Our lads took it to see it as an opportunity. If we had gotten another goal then that would have been another memorable half of football at the Mem.
SIGN UP: To receive our free Rovers newsletter, bringing you the latest from the Mem
READ NEXT:
