Saturday 6th July, 2013 at 1:51pm
Although the result itself means nothing it was still a disappointed Alan Archibald that [link:HOME] spoke to after yesterday’s 2-1 defeat to Gateshead.
“I’m disappointed that we lost because it was in front of the fans and I’m disappointed with the goals that we lost. They were really poor goals to lose. They were really basic goals to lose. We weren’t concentrating too much on the result though; it was more about getting the players fit.”
Conditions were far from ideal as the manager explains.
“It was very warm out there and the players worked hard. We didn’t realise either that the pitch would be as bad as it was; it’s nothing like the surface that we train on. That’s really the reason we treated it almost as two separate games of 45 minutes and went with virtually two different teams.”
A few sat out yesterday’s game and Alan was able to give us an update on that.
“Steven Lawless picked up a knock during training, Stuart Bannigan picked up an injury against Airdrie in a closed door game and Sean Welsh is still struggling. Stuart’s swelling has gone down and he’ll hopefully be back involved by the end of the week although he won’t be involved against Annan with the game being on astro.”
Our next game, away to Annan Athletic on Tuesday night, is also on an artificial pitch and that brings its’ own set of problems.
Said Alan;
“It totally changes who you are going to play and when you are going to play them and what you are going to do with players especially when the pitch has a heat like that in it. We worried too about injuries; we’ve three already and we don’t want any more. It definitely hinders your thoughts on how you are going to play.”
In total five trialists played part of Saturday’s game and again the manager was able to provide us with an update on that situation.
“They’ve done well all week. They struggled a bit today just because of the fact that we were fitting in different players in different positions and it is a struggle getting to know players, but that is just part and parcel of football. They did really well in training and we’ll be seeing them again pre-season and we’ll sort things out from there. If they aren’t good enough we’ll move them on and if they are good enough we’ll try and keep them.”
Despite the week ending in a defeat the manager feels that the week away was more than a useful exercise.
“It been fantastic. The facilities down here have been great. The players have worked hard all week and I think they were a bit leggy today and that was a result of how hard they’ve worked this week. They’ve done double sessions every day this week and even trained on the day we had a game. It’s been a good week’s work.”
After a couple of weeks’ of really hard graft the emphasis in training will shift a little now.
“With more games coming up we’ll tailor our training sessions to that. They’ve done a lot of hard work so now we will concentrate on sharper sessions. You could see from the game today that we need to work on the players’ sharpness. We’re now on the countdown to the start of the season, which is four weeks away now, and we’re looking forward to that. We’ll start tailoring what we do to that and start working on the shape and how we want to play.”
