Below are selected highlights from Thursday afternoon’s press conference ahead of Town facing Cardiff on Saturday afternoon. You can find the full audio above or in your We Are Terriers podcast feed.
Lee Grant
Team news - any fresh concerns after after Tuesday?
No, all unscathed. I haven’t got to say that very often, so that’s really pleasing.
Antony Evans, is there a specific sort of time frame on on him after his scans last week?
No, but I think good news in the sense that Antony won’t have to have his injury surgically repaired, so that will reduce the time frame. In terms of an exact date, it’s hard to pinpoint when he’ll be on the grass again, [but] it’s going to be a couple of months, I would imagine, before Antony is back with us.
You said at the start the week that Herbie Kane is back running. How much of a milestone is that? And what’s his sort of time frame now looking like?
Yeah, it’s really important. I suppose with Herbie, each milestones is important, but it’s one of these injuries where the fact he’s had to have the repair on the groin means that there is no speeding up of his recovery process. It really does need time to heal and everything to knit back together properly.
So he’s in a really good place, and what I think we will see with Herbie, with the work that he’s doing in this period, is him hopefully be able to return back to himself quicker, because there’s always that period between being fit and then actually being match fit. So I think the work that he’s doing now putting him in a really good place.
How pleased were you to be able to give David Kasumu 70 minutes on Tuesday?
It’s really nice. I know he was itching for it as well, and I think probably an important part of that, maybe the most important part is his reaction in terms of his body and how he’s felt since. So that’s a big plus for us.
Just what are your reflections on the Lincoln game a few days on?
Similar to how I felt post game, really, which was that it was a really, really, incredibly pleasing performance from my perspective.
I know the group would have been satisfied with how they went after the game and the result that they got from it, and the rewards.
It was a really strong performance, and I think made even sweeter by the fact that Lincoln picked a side to win the game, and having spoken to their manager afterwards and listened to everything they said before it was a tie they wanted to win, and really felt they could. So for us to go there and be so dominant, and I think play in such a controlled fashion, was really pleasing.
Personnel wise, how tough has that made your your selection going into this weekend, given that you made those nine changes?
It’s ideal, I’ve got to say. We’ve been desperate for the group to be fuller and competitive, that’s what we wanted all along. We certainly had a really nice period at the start, maybe six weeks, seven weeks at the start of the season, where everybody was fit, everybody was pushing and fighting.
We’re still not quite back to everybody, but what we have got, as we showed on Tuesday night, is real depth, and people champing at the bit to be back and involved. So that’s great.
Does it make my job harder? Absolutely not. I think back to the period where we’re losing 13, 14 players…you can only dream of being in a situation where you can make nine changes for for the Lincoln game still be as strong as we were.
So I’m not going to curse my luck on on that fact, I’m going to enjoy perhaps the little bit of tension or sweating that I might have to do this evening around picking the team and be thankful that we’re in a good place.
Do you know just yet who your goalkeeper will be at Cardiff?
It’s no different to any of the other positions. You’ve got 11 players on the pitch and I’ve got to pick and treat all positions with the same level of care and thought…who are we playing, how are we training, how is each individual psychologically and emotionally, what does the team need this week or next week? All of those things will come into consideration for all the positions.
I make my decisions on my team, and the boys will know who’s going out to to start the game, on Friday morning. So that process won’t change.
Ben Wiles
What’s the mood like in the place at the minute after Tuesday and some recent wins?
Yeah, very good. Obviously, we’re frustrated ourselves because of how well we’re playing, and we’ve not always got the results we wanted. We’ve gone away from [last week’s games], and we’ve done a lot of classroom work in terms of watching back certain kind moves that other teams have done to us, and what we can do better in those. circumstances.
But as a general feeling, it’s really good. We can take such positives from it, and that will just drive us in our performances.
How much does Lee Grant enjoy coaching you in the classroom when you do have those sort of sessions? How analytical is he as a manager?
I think they all are — all the staff and the analysis team do such a good job of painting really good pictures of us and a clear understanding, because on a Saturday, on a Tuesday, you don’t see it in the moment, and then it’s sometimes nice to sit back and look from afar and then think, yeah, that I could have done better there, or that’s not good enough.
It’s just a reflection from us all, and I think that’s really important for us as a team. He’s as passionate as he is with us on the pitch, but it’s so important as well for us learning. We’re all still learning, you know, we all don’t know it still. So, yeah, it’s important to us.
I think a lot of managers — these days, anyway — will do a lot of classroom work and will do a lot of analysis and reflection on the performances and the opposition teams. I just think it’s kind of a normal thing. But you do feel the passionate side from him a bit more.
How big was it to get that clean sheet on Tuesday — it must have been huge for the group?
Yeah, it’s another confidence booster we can take into into Saturday. We’ve leaked a few goals that we’re not happy with, so to come away with a clean sheet is putting things right. You can obviously see that things are changing. I know it’s only one game, but what we can take from it, what we’ve watched back, there’s people that are kind of clicking on to what we expect, and people are just putting the bodies on the line now.
