Below are selected highlights from Thursday afternoon’s press conference ahead of Town returning to League One action against Plymouth on Saturday afternoon. You can find the full audio above or in our podcast feed - search for We Are Terriers wherever you get your podcasts.
Lee Grant
It feels like a very important game again on Saturday, there’s a lot of expectation to beat Plymouth. What will be key to getting the three points?
High intent. I think from the group, high intent.
Look, we know it’s an important fixture, but we’ve highlighted this week as an important week. So what we want to do is try and finish the week off in the style that we set about Tuesday night, and carry that energy and momentum and feeling into Saturday’s fixture.
We know that it will be a difficult tie course, and they’ll be in a situation where they’re really looking to turn their form around and wrestle back some momentum in their season — but absolutely, for us, it’s the highest importance that we head into this game with top mentality and high intent in terms of really going after the game.
Is it as much a mental challenge as a physical one?
I think absolutely is, but we know a big physical effort is needed from the group, because we are threadbare, we know that.
But in some senses, there’s the closeness and that tight group can bring some extra added energy and feeling to it. So I’m quite comfortable with that. I think the group are the same: they’ve all got their heads on, we are what we are, we have what we have.
I can see each of them looking around, knowing full well that they have to play big minutes and be ready for that, and we know there’s an international break to come afterwards. So it’s all hands to the pump and everything we’ve got to really go after the game.
Somebody that we did see make a start for the club on Tuesday night was Radinio Balker, who I think a lot of people at some stage would have thought unlikely to see him in a Town shirt again. How pleased are you with how he stepped up in that game and what can he bring, particularly in the absence of Joe Low?
Delighted for Rads, delighted. Not at any point has Rads lost the energy or smile that he brings, and that’s important in terms of retaining his sense of hope within what’s been a difficult period for him: pre-season disrupted, back end of last season disrupted, away on international duty a couple of occasions, and if anything, perhaps one of those international breaks came a little bit too early, but he managed to get himself some minutes and then comes back and perhaps paid the price for that a little bit over the last few weeks.
But he’s put himself in a position where he is able to be involved with us, and then, for me, a really assured performance and I’m just delighted for him, on a personal note, forget about anything else for a minute — I’m really pleased for Rads.
So that’s really good, and that’s a big plus for us, and as we’ve said, and sat and spoke as a group before this week…all hands to the pub, everybody be ready, everybody will be used, and Rads, there’s no better example of that.
When we look through the list of absences, there’s quite a few calves at the moment. Is there any particular pattern in that, or is it just one of those things?
It’s really difficult in terms of trying to pinpoint, but you have to look at everything. We can’t accept the fact that we’ve had three or four of a similar-looking injury.
So you have to look at pitches, we have to look at training load, we have to look at preparation, we have to look at what players are doing away from the football club…all of these things have to come into the equation. The difficult thing is, is that each player will have their own physiology and psychology as well, which also feeds into what’s going on with each and every individual as to how their body’s performing from one day to the next.
So it is complicated. We don’t feel settled about it, to be honest with you, we don’t feel like this is something we can just brush away. It’s something that we need to really, really dig into and there’s a lot of people at the football club doing exactly that right now.
We’ve been incredibly unlucky with injuries as well. We’ve had players running in straight lines on several occasions with nobody near them and breaking feet or doing knees and being out for four months. We’ve had people falling and doing shoulders. We’ve had the full spectrum of bad luck
We also don’t want to be as daft as to say ‘it’s just not going our way’ and ‘poor us, poor us’ — we also can’t be in that boat either. So we have to be prepared to look at everything across all departments to make sure we’re giving the players the best chance, individually, and of course, the players as well have to make sure they’re doing everything they can at their end. History will also play a part — each individual player’s histories and where they’ve been at and what’s affected them in the past as well.
So look, we have to take everything into account. But for sure, the club and myself were doing that.
Ryan Ledson
It felt like that was an important win in the EFL Trophy this week. How much do you think it was needed?
It was definitely needed. Good performance, lads getting minutes on the pitch, we scored a few goals as well...so yeah, it was important, important to ever get the feel-good factor back and we need to kick on from there now.
You got an assist for Dion’s second goal — how pleased are you for him, not just yourself, but as a group, to see him get on the scoresheet?
Aw, really pleased for him. He’s a top lad, Dion. He works his socks off every time trains and in games. He’s probably been a bit unfortunate and it probably would have been a burden on his back, but he’s got he’s got that now, and as long as your strikers can come and score goals, that’s important for everyone. The whole team benefits, not just Dion.
I travel in with Dion every day and he’s a good character around the place anyway. As I say, he wears his socks off in training, and every time he gets on the pitch as well, so it can only be a positive for him.
It just shows his resilience that he’s kept at it, and we all know he’s a goalscorer, especially at this level — his record speaks for itself — so hopefully he can find the net a couple more times for us.
Now it’s about sorting the league form out. Why do you think it hasn’t quite been clicking in recent weeks?
Could be a number of things. I think obviously, decision making is a big one. Obviously, we’ve had conceding late goals, the sending offs, there’s all sorts.
We know it’s been a difficult period for us, but we’ve got to try and stay positive and get out of that. We know the quality that’s in the dressing room, we’ve got the belief still in the dressing room, so hopefully that’s the dip gone and we get back to winning ways.
A lot of focus falls on you and the role that you can play in perhaps lifting teammates through difficult times. How have you found that responsibility in recent weeks?
Yeah, it’s a big responsibility for myself. Definitely, in the changing room I’m loud, getting around people and giving them confidence and letting them know we will be all right, we’re going to be OK, but we’ve just got to keep showing up.
We can’t hide away from the fact that just because we’ve lost a couple of games, we can go missing. You’ve got to carry on coming into work every day, working hard, and it’ll change for us — and I believe that it will.
Lee Grant has talked publicly that when the chips are down, he wants to see more resilience to be a stronger group. I think his words after the Wycombe game were ‘I need to see my senior leaders turning the momentum or or galvanizing. They have to do a better job’ — is it something that you’ve actually, actively spoken to him about?
Yeah, listen, I agree with him, that’s fine for the gaffer to say that. It’s up to us senior lads to get us through games like that and difficult moments, and we’ve definitely been through a difficult moment at this stage, but it’s about us to stand up. The experienced lads are big enough and ugly enough to take it on the chin.
But I’ll tell you one thing we won’t do is we won’t hide away from the fact that we’ve got to win games of football again.
