Every Friday, Town Assistant Peter Shirtliff keeps you updated on the week's goings on at The County Ground.

This week he reflects on a week spent recovering from a derby defeat, and preparing for the visit of Brighton.....

We've had a steady week this week, and have had training every day from Tuesday onwards in preparation for the Brighton game tomorrow, when hopefully we can get back to winning ways.

The boys were a little bit subdued at the beginning of the week, but they've soon picked up as we've gone through the it.

The week was structured a little differently with the boys being off on MONDAY having had their Christmas party over the weekend. They've been working very hard so far this season, so we thought they deserve a bit of a break now and again.

But we had them in on TUESDAY and I think it's fair to say Dave Morrison gave them a fairly reasonable warm up after their long weekend!

The lads coped with it well and were fine for the rest of the session. It was nice to get them in and move on from the Bristol Rovers game pretty quickly, and the general attitude around the place has been that you don't become a bad side overnight and we all know we're not.

When you lose it's not as bad as you think and when you win it's not as great as you think. There is always some middle ground there, but Danny and I are always looking to improve, as are the players.

I didn't get to go to the reserve game against Forest Green Rovers as I wasn't very well. I'd had a booster injection which knocked me for six a little bit so I missed it which was a shame.

But the boys did pretty well by all accounts in a 4-2 win, and it was nice to see four different names on the score sheet too.

They were in for training again on WEDNESDAY and we talked about one or two things that we can look at and improve on from Saturday, but it was all fine tuning.

These things are neither major nor trivial, they're somewhere in between, and I think we've got across to the boys the way we want to apply ourselves on Saturday.

Training on THURSDAY was again made up of working on structural things for the weekend ahead of the match with Brighton.

They said...

It was a strange game last Saturday, but we've just got to be positive, get on with it and pick ourselves up for Brighton.

Shirtliff looks forward to Brighton test

We worked on a few bits and pieces based on the way we think Brighton might play, and it got through to the players ok, but whether or not they change that remains to be seen, but if they do then we'll just have to adjust accordingly.

With them being the away side, and struggling for form a little at the moment many people might expect them to come here and settle for a point like Leyton Orient did in the last home game.

But it's hard to say whether they're going to set up in a similar fashion to Orient in the last home game, but however they set up we'll have to react accordingly and deal with the situation it presents us with.

It will be light and bright in training on FRIDAY, just fine tuning a few things here and there, but it won't be a long one as we want to keep the players as fresh as possible for the game.

There certainly are no easy games in this league and Saturday will be no different. I expect Brighton to be alright come the end of the season, but at the moment they're fighting for points and it's going to be a difficult game.

They've got some good players and we know that, so we've got to be at our best to shut them out.

With a new manager the players will want to impress him, as is always the case. They've had an indifferent period recently but the players are still in that period of wanting to show Gus Poyet what they can do so we'll have to be wary of that.

Forster and Murray will be big threats to us up front, and the young lad Elliott Bennett who they've got in from Wolves looks pretty useful as well.

They have got some players that can hurt teams, but so have we, so we just have to hope our players can do the business, which I'm confident they can.

It was strange game last Saturday because I don't think we warranted a 3-0 defeat, but sometimes football is like that and we've just got to be positive, get on with it and pick ourselves up on Saturday.

See you there,

Peter Shirtliff

..............and one more from you:

What do you make of Mick McCarthy's decision to make ten changes to his side for the match against Manchester United on Tuesday night?

Sarah Maunders, Swindon

PS: "I can understand why he did it and I can understand the reaction, but the bottom line is Mick is just trying to do what it best for the club and that is to keep the club in the Premier League.

"I can see where Arsene Wenger is coming from in saying it's an unfair advantage for Man United playing against a weakened team, but he regularly rests players too when he sees fit.

"At the end of the day football is a very selfish game, and there's no doubt about that. Everybody wants to do what's good for them and that's life.It's big news this weekend but there will be something else to talk about after the weekend!"