Keith Curle ahead of the visit of Colchester
Manager Keith Curle gave us his thoughts ahead of the visit of Colchester United on Saturday.“Tomorrow is a great opportunity to set a new record but I think that’s secondary,” he said. “Our thoughts first and foremost after the Doncaster game on Tuesday night were immediately on Colchester and what we need to do to get a positive result.
“As always we have looked at the threats they bring and at the areas where we think we’ll be able to cause them problems. They have players who can hurt you in wide areas and they have decent movement and can be very direct in their play.
“I’d expect to see Chris Porter as the focal point and they’ll be very good on the counter-attack as they work off him. We’ll need to guard against crosses into the box from wide but they’ll know that it’ll be a long day if they let us play our style of football.”
“I think they’ll play very deep, condense the area and pack the midfield,” he continued. “I think they’ll try to nullify certain areas of the pitch where they feel we will be strong. For them to do that effectively they’ll have to play deeper and defend closer to the box.
“They certainly aren’t a team who will lie down. They’ll have a game plan and they’ll want to push us all the way. They’ll want to keep our crowd quiet but there’s an understanding from our fans that it will sometimes take 95 minutes to get the job done. We’ll be doing everything we can to get the three points tomorrow.
“They’re behind us all the way and even when they’re frustrated we’re still getting the backing we need. That is absolutely fantastic for us. We’re building a way of doing things at the moment and the fans are enjoying it. Arguably you could say if we’d turned two or three of the draws into wins, which could have been the case, we’d be sitting very nice now.”
“We have a clean bill of health and that’s down to some fantastic work being done behind the scenes by Neil Dalton and Lee Fearn,” he commented. “The fitness levels and recovery and prehab processes are giving us the best opportunity to get the best out of the small squad we have.
“You do also find that when things are going well the little niggles are coped with by the players.”
On what it means to his strikers to be scoring goals at the moment, he said: “Jabo wants and needs to score goals. Managers need their strikers to be doing that because it goes towards winning games. He’ll go on a run and when that happens, as we’ve seen, he really is on fire.
“We have three strikers here who can do that as well and in my mind I still want to bring another one in. Whether that’s short, medium or long term I do think there’s room for another forward who has different skill sets.
“Shaun Miller has had a good week and, as I explained last week, he’s a player I needed to get a reaction out of. I wanted to see how he reacted to the challenge of being involved in the bounce game and I wanted to see him get into positions to get opportunities to score. He had three good chances to score against Doncaster and that’s exactly what I want to see because it means he’s doing the right things.”
And on the two trialists currently in the building, he explained: “We’re going to give the lad from Chelsea one more game. He’s shown some good things but I do want to see him play in another 90 minutes.
“Sometimes I want to see players tested in different scenarios and roles to see how they cope. Hopefully we’ll get a bounce game for next Wednesday but we are mindful of the fact we have the game on Tuesday night.”
Manager Keith Curle gave us his thoughts ahead of the visit of Colchester United on Saturday.
“Tomorrow is a great opportunity to set a new record but I think that’s secondary,” he said. “Our thoughts first and foremost after the Doncaster game on Tuesday night were immediately on Colchester and what we need to do to get a positive result.
“As always we have looked at the threats they bring and at the areas where we think we’ll be able to cause them problems. They have players who can hurt you in wide areas and they have decent movement and can be very direct in their play.
“I’d expect to see Chris Porter as the focal point and they’ll be very good on the counter-attack as they work off him. We’ll need to guard against crosses into the box from wide but they’ll know that it’ll be a long day if they let us play our style of football.”
“I think they’ll play very deep, condense the area and pack the midfield,” he continued. “I think they’ll try to nullify certain areas of the pitch where they feel we will be strong. For them to do that effectively they’ll have to play deeper and defend closer to the box.
“They certainly aren’t a team who will lie down. They’ll have a game plan and they’ll want to push us all the way. They’ll want to keep our crowd quiet but there’s an understanding from our fans that it will sometimes take 95 minutes to get the job done. We’ll be doing everything we can to get the three points tomorrow.
“They’re behind us all the way and even when they’re frustrated we’re still getting the backing we need. That is absolutely fantastic for us. We’re building a way of doing things at the moment and the fans are enjoying it. Arguably you could say if we’d turned two or three of the draws into wins, which could have been the case, we’d be sitting very nice now.”
“We have a clean bill of health and that’s down to some fantastic work being done behind the scenes by Neil Dalton and Lee Fearn,” he commented. “The fitness levels and recovery and prehab processes are giving us the best opportunity to get the best out of the small squad we have.
“You do also find that when things are going well the little niggles are coped with by the players.”
On what it means to his strikers to be scoring goals at the moment, he said: “Jabo wants and needs to score goals. Managers need their strikers to be doing that because it goes towards winning games. He’ll go on a run and when that happens, as we’ve seen, he really is on fire.
“We have three strikers here who can do that as well and in my mind I still want to bring another one in. Whether that’s short, medium or long term I do think there’s room for another forward who has different skill sets.
“Shaun Miller has had a good week and, as I explained last week, he’s a player I needed to get a reaction out of. I wanted to see how he reacted to the challenge of being involved in the bounce game and I wanted to see him get into positions to get opportunities to score. He had three good chances to score against Doncaster and that’s exactly what I want to see because it means he’s doing the right things.”
And on the two trialists currently in the building, he explained: “We’re going to give the lad from Chelsea one more game. He’s shown some good things but I do want to see him play in another 90 minutes.
“Sometimes I want to see players tested in different scenarios and roles to see how they cope. Hopefully we’ll get a bounce game for next Wednesday but we are mindful of the fact we have the game on Tuesday night.”
United PlayerHD subscribers can see an interview with Keith Curle now. Click HERE to go to the PlayerHD platform. Follow the same link for more information on United PlayerHD, and to subscribe.
