Here are some of the edited highlights from the press conference — you can find the full audio above or in your podcast feed, including Ashley Fletcher’s section of the presser.
Martin Drury
Let’s start with some team news ahead of tomorrow’s game. Can you give us an update on Ilias Bronkhorst first of all — is he going to be available?
Yes, he will be available, yeah.
Anybody else back? Bojan [Radulovic], Murray Wallace?
Both will be available, yeah.
Good news, but Marcus McGuane — we’ve heard some rumours doing the rounds that he has picked up an injury. Can you tell us any more on that?
Marcus suffered an injury in training on Wednesday.
We’re devastated for him. I know Marcus worked hard in pre-season to get himself in really good physical condition. He is a brilliant, brilliant person, loves his football and is very, very dedicated towards his football.
So losing him in training is gutting, primarily for him, but for us as a group as well, because he is a top player for this level.
It was a tough day. It was something really innocuous in training when the injury took place, and it was visible to see how much pain Marcus was in at the time.
We’ll make sure he is well looked after, that he gets a little bit of that love, and that he comes back in the best state.
What exactly has he done? Do you know yet?
He has ruptured his ACL, which is becoming more and more common in professional and elite football.
It is happening all over the place. It is the nature of the game in terms of how fast the game has moved on now from a physical standpoint.
He was heading impeccably well, so for that to happen to him at this period before the season starts is devastating for himself, and it affected everyone like that.
That is really awful news. On a more positive note, let’s talk about the arrival of Archie Collins yesterday. What is he going to bring to the squad for you?
As I said in the press release, he is someone I have admired for a long period of time.
I remember the pre-game analysis last season when we played Peterborough away, and I had not really seen too much of Archie at that time because I had obviously been working in Valencia and then at Bradford.
I remember watching the Peterborough games prior to us playing them, and I remember saying, “Who is this player?”
He looked well above the level, in my opinion, in terms of his game understanding, his quality, the way he could control the rhythm of a game and dictate the game. I was really impressed with him.
Seeing that he left Peterborough in the summer, I fully expected him to be playing Championship football this season. I think that is what he is capable of.
So we are really, really fortunate that as time has gone by, it became apparent that he could become available. As soon as I knew he was available from the club’s point of view, myself and the club were really eager to get him in.
We think he will bring something to the group that will help us.
If you look at Cam Humphreys last season and some of the impact Cam made, we missed Cam because he was not only a really good player, but everyone around him played with him and improved because of a lot of the things he did.
Archie will come in and he has different qualities to Cam, but there is a calmness about him, and he plays in a similar way to what Cam does. So we look forward to working with him.
It sounds like you had to fight quite hard to get him, if you were expecting him to end up at a Championship club. What did you say to convince him?
I think Archie said it himself. He felt the club had the same aspirations as him, and he wants to be playing Championship football. He wants to play as high as he possibly can.
I don’t know how much fighting was going on. I had one conversation with him, one meeting with him, and we talked football and we talked life. We felt very aligned as men first and foremost.
Dale [Tonge] has worked with him previously at Peterborough, so he gave a glowing reference about him as a human being first and foremost.
The fact we know what quality he has got as a player meant it was one we were excited to get done.
Is Archie Collins ready to go straight into the team this weekend, or would you rather keep that to yourself?
No, he is not ready.
He has not played a game for four months. He has been without a club. He has trained with Exeter, so he has got minutes in his legs in terms of training content, but he has not played games.
It would be negligent on our part to include him in the game tomorrow, as much as I would love to. It would be the wrong thing to do, and we would put him at risk of picking up an injury.
It is just not possible to do that, so we will build him up. Hopefully, we will get him ready to be involved next weekend.
Herbie Kane, Cam Ashia — any change?
Same as last week. No change.
Tom Iorpenda wasn’t in your squad last weekend. What is his situation at present?
Tom is obviously our player at this moment in time.
There is interest in Tom from other clubs, as we spoke about last week.
We have a duty of care to make sure Tom is fit and right, and if that happens — which has not happened yet, but looks likely to happen — the last thing we want to do, from our point of view and from an asset perspective, is for someone to pick up a needless injury. Likewise for Tom himself.
He has trained brilliantly and he has been great around the training ground.
If the window closes and Tom is still with us, brilliant. We have got a great player on our hands, a real young asset.
If he is not here, then we will wish him well and make sure we get the right deal for the club.
Ashley Fletcher spoke warmly earlier about George Sebine and how he has been working with him. Is George one you are going to have around the first team this season? Is there no plan to send him out on loan to get some wool on his back, or is he part of your plans now?
It is probably a little bit too early to call that at this moment in time, but George is training really well.
We know he was thrown in at the back end of last season and he did some really good things for us.
He has got more people around him at the minute who he is able to learn from. As Fletch will have rightly said, I’m sure the strikers will tell you when we do finishing in training that George is one of the best. He is excellent. He has got real composure in front of goal.
We will continue to work with George. There are things we need to refine in terms of his capabilities, and we will help him be the best player he can possibly be.
If that means sending him out on loan at some point, then we will do, but right now I don’t see that happening.
Ashley Fletcher
Opening game tomorrow, then. What are you looking for? Obviously a win would be nice, but what are your priorities from this opening fixture against Wimbledon?
We need to hit the ground running, of course, and we won’t be satisfied with anything other than three points.
There are obviously still early days in terms of those relationships building with new players, and there are always going to be a few teething problems, of course.
But for me, there should be no excuses. We go into that game attacking the game, and we need to start off with a win.
A lot of fans, understandably, were frustrated with how last Saturday went, and Martin Drury made no secret of his frustration with the second half. What has he said to you this week, and what has he had you working on to try to put that right for future games?
On reflection, when you watch the game back, bar the first 10 minutes of the first half, we probably dominated that first half.
Then we didn’t keep hold of the ball well enough in the second half to make that man advantage count.
All in all, we were disappointed, and the manager was disappointed, and we knew that.
But we came in on Monday, went straight back to work, and that is all you can do. You have to analyse where things went wrong and how you can get better. We did that, then quickly moved on to Wimbledon, which is a similar game.
You talk about being an unusual profile for a big man. We saw that with Bojan last season: he is maybe not your archetypal big striker, and when he first came to the club he had to work on his stuff in the air. Did the fact Bojan thrived last season enter into your thinking when you decided to come to the club?
Listen, I played against Bojan and I know about his quality.
We’re very similar. He’s someone who has got a fantastic first touch and someone who can score goals.
For me, it’s exciting to see that we could both play together up there and cause teams real problems.
I’m sure it’s a nice scenario to have for the manager and the staff. There are four of us in there: me, Joe Taylor, Bojan and George Sebine as well, who I think is a really, really good prospect and someone I’m hoping I can take under my wing a little bit and help.
But we’ll all be scrapping about to make sure our names are on the team sheet for Saturday or Tuesday.
