Town Head Coach Luke Williams sat down with members of the local media on Thursday to discuss a number of topics ahead of his side’s Sky Bet League One game away at Rochdale on Saturday (3pm Kick-Off)…
ON BOUNCING BACK AFTER TUESDAY’S EMIRATES FA CUP DEFEAT:
“We’re disappointed that we’ve not been able to build on a good performance again and find much needed consistency, so the overwhelming emotion is disappointment.
“I’ve watched the group for a long time and it is hard to put your finger on why players are making such bad decisions and such contrasting decisions to the performance before.
“But it won’t stop us going to the training ground and putting things right, it won’t stop us from talking to the players and trying to show them and highlight areas where they need to improve and areas of course where they’ve been exceptional.
“We need to get them to think more about the things we’ve done well and less about the things that are causing us a problem.
“We know the mentality of the group is not strong enough when they concede a goal and things start to change quite quickly, so we need to keep pushing the players to be stronger and keep finding a mechanism for them to try and trigger a recovery in their mind.
“There’s a few specifics and there’s a few areas that are difficult to put your finger on.
“We need to get the work in and we need to arm them with all the answers in their mind before they step on to the pitch.
ON ROCHDALE:
“Rochdale are going to look at our 3-0 win against them here a few weeks ago and find reasons why they got beat and try and address that.
“I think personnel may be different for both teams as well so I don’t think we’ll be looking at that as an indication that we’re going to go there and get a similar result and neither will they.
“We are going to leave from Highworth early on Friday to try and miss all the traffic and then we’ll train just outside Rochdale.”
ON LUKE NORRIS:
“I’ve got full confidence in Luke and the fact that he’s arriving and getting the opportunities is the first and most important thing.
“He now just needs to find that composure inside the box to make the correct contact and to hit the correct area of the goal.
“I’m sure that will come.”
ON WILL HENRY’S PERFORMANCE AGAINST DALE LAST SEASON:
“That was a fantastic day and I think we were a little bit unfortunate on the day and we may have fallen victim to some horrific refereeing, but Will Henry was sensational.
“He’s gone on to show that wasn’t a one-off and I’m sure there is going to be a lot more of those performances from him in the future.”
ON STRINGING TOGETHER A RUN OF WINS:
“We need to start chalking up some victories because we all know the points tally you need to get to and I was in this situation last year.
“We looked at the board in the office and we knew how many games we needed to win to almost guarantee safety and that is scary when you start to look at it and think ‘they are tough’, then you look at the next game and think ‘they’re tough’ and it goes on and on.
“But we won five out of six and then we went seven unbeaten so it can be done and you need to look at the games as opportunities and not as threats.
“You need to be brave enough to feel like you’ve got a chance to win every single game.”
