MANAGER: The door isn't closed

“A few of the lads have said they’ve been contacted by agents to say there is interest, but that hasn’t filtered through to me or the club,” he said. “The reason they’ve been made available is to help them to further their careers and to get them more game time, if they aren’t getting it here. That can only be of benefit to them. 

“If you aren’t playing you can get into bad habits, but what I will say is that nobody is being forced out of this club. I won’t tell a player that if he doesn’t go out on loan he’ll be banished to the kids, or anything like that. I’m just not like that.” 

“The understanding has to be that if they aren’t playing here they have to do it somewhere else,” he explained. “If a player is here, available for loan, and there’s no interest in him then that can be a wake up call in itself. 

“That would suggest they need to be doing more because, when their contracts are up in the summer, we all suddenly have a massive pool of players to look at. So, they are available for loan but the door certainly isn’t closed. They can still get in the team here if the opportunity comes up.”

Speaking about the change in formation at Peterborough, he said: “If I think the right thing to do to get a result is to play one up front, then I’ll do it. You can get into the debate of whether or not that is negative. but if the players know their jobs then the formation can work. 

“I coached with Neil Warnock at QPR and we went 4-3-3 all season. We ended up with a record number of points. We made sure we were very difficult to break down and I don’t think there are many teams at the moment who have won things or got promotion using 4-4-2. 

“How we play will depend on who is in form, what I’ve seen on the training pitch and who I think will be the most effective in the style we want to play. That could be for any formation depending on what we think the best route to take is at the time.”