The manager looks ahead
United manager Greg Abbott today admitted that he is looking forward to the start of the new season having had a short break with friends and family over the weekend.
“I genuinely can’t wait for the season to come round again,” he said.
“The industry is getting tougher and tougher, and harder and harder, but we’re all on a level playing field at the moment. We’re all joint top of the table and we want to stay there.”
"You look at Yeovil and they are the real success story of this season,” he added. “There’s definitely room for the less affluent clubs to be successful. You have to believe that or there is no point in doing the job.”
“I think we just need results on the pitch if we want to win our fans back,” he said. “We need much better performances and some of those results we suffered at home last season were real shots through the heart.
“We lost fans and it was then difficult for us to get them back. I don’t think the fans have anything personal against me; they just want to see success on the field. I think they’re starting to understand that the club is more difficult to manage at the moment than has it been for a while.
“They wanted to see more in the way of success this season and we found it hard to deliver. What we can’t get away from is that results on the pitch are key to everything. We have to get that right. I take full responsibility for that, and for what happened, and for now doing what we need to do to win them back.”
“Fans pay their money and they are entitled to their opinion,” he told us. “I was talking to Paul Jewell last week and he said that any manager who says they enjoy every minute of their job is telling a lie. Nobody likes over the top personal criticism but I think we all understand that it’s now part of the job. He commented on that and on how bad it can get for us all.
“Losing badly at home hurts. There is no way that anybody in Carlisle would want to be in that technical area when you’re 3-0 down. It’s a really lonely place when that’s happening. I’m a much tougher person now because you have to learn how to deal with all of that.”
“The real success story from last year is our young players,” he admitted. “It isn’t easy to get players through and we’ve done well in that respect, as a club. We won’t always get three or four through but, when it happens, it’s fantastic for everyone.”
“Youth will probably play a very big part in what we want to do going forward,” he added. “However, we do need a spine of experience to help it along. That means we need to find the players we want who are out there and who are at the right price. Experienced players provide less of a gamble – but this could be the time for us to take a few more of those calculated gambles, if you like.”
“Every day, next season, will be a coaching day,” he said. “That means the staff will have to work in a different way. We feel we need to give the younger players a more rounded training programme, so they will do something every afternoon. That will be more on the technical areas of the game because we think that will bring them on even more.
“I’m eager to see that happen and evolve. It’s an exciting one for the young players. They’ve been terrific with the work we’ve done with them and, if we do this properly, it can only make them better.”
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