Manager ahead of the weekend
United manager Greg Abbott spoke to us ahead of the weekend trip to Shrewsbury.
“Both teams will want to win this for their own reasons,” he said. “Every single game we play is vital because our job is to get points, so this one is no different in that respect.
“It’ll be a typically tough and feisty game. They have just come up this season so they’ll be determined to consolidate at the very least. Graham [Turner] is a good and experienced manager and they’ll be very organised. We’ll have to work hard but we ask for that every week.
“We know how difficult our situation is with our current run of results but we’re going to go into it with the right attitude and a positive approach. We’ve played well on the road this season and we need some more of that at the moment.
“The lads are in good spirits and that’s important. The aim is to go there and hopefully cause some real problems for Shrewsbury so that we come back with the points.
“We’ve done a lot of work on the training pitch this week to make sure that we are focusing in the right areas. We had a two hour meeting on Thursday where we were able to show the players a few things using the DVDs, and that was a good opportunity to get a message across. The players took everything on board and they didn’t have too much to say in reply, but there is a determination to sort things out.
“It ended with us knowing that we all continue to work together and that we all need each other if we’re going to put this behind us. The fact of the matter is that if we keep losing games then we’ll find ourselves scrapping at the wrong end of things, and that isn’t something we want.
“It was a meeting which set out that it is now probably last chance saloon for our goals against column. We’re not stupid enough to think that situations can go on forever. The talking has to stop now – the doing has to start.
“We are what we are with injuries and we feel we’re in good shape for Saturday. Hopefully the next week will see us get most of the lads back and then we can go into a busy period with an almost full quota.
“We’ll be without the ones we know about for tomorrow. Peter Murphy, James Berrett and Lee Miller are definitely out, and Frank Simek is very doubtful. Rory [Loy] has had a slight setback with a back niggle but that won’t affect him for too long. However, like I say, we think we’ve got a squad which is strong enough to go there and do the job despite all of that.”
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