Assistant Manager Aaron Downes discusses United’s preparations ahead of The Gulls’ televised clash at his previous club Chesterfield on Saturday.
During the course of the week, United’s players have been hard at work behind the scenes in preparation for this weekend’s trip to Derbyshire, as Aaron explains:
“The boys will be prepared. We’ve had a full week where we’ve been able to organise the players and everything, so when we go there fully prepared, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy – that’s for sure – but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be impossible either. We’re ready, we’re prepared, and we know what we’re doing. We’ll go there with confidence after the weekend, so I’m looking forward to it.
“Football is fine margins, so one win isn’t going to change anything but at the same time it does give you a bit of confidence, and the belief that the boys know they can do it and what the teammates around them can do. That does help, but, we’re under no illusions that one result is going to all of a sudden make us promotion favourites, but at the same time, six results previous aren’t going to make us relegation fodder.”
Back in May, It was Gary Johnson’s men who were leading the way ahead of the chasing pack, and although it is very early days in 2021/22, Downes seems to be keen for his team to set his sights on the summit.
“Everybody’s still figuring each other out a bit – in the league that is – as well as there’s still a few players figuring themselves out in our team. There’s still a long way to go as we know, but we are looking forward to going there on Saturday, that’s for sure.”
“There will be a lot of talk about where we finished last year and how we finished, and after last year being chased for so long, it will be nice to be the chasers. But in saying that, we’re 13th in the league, we’re not 4th chasing 1st, so it is still early days, but there’s still a bit of ground to make up on Chesterfield. It is nice not to constantly have the outside pressure on you of staying in top spot, but at the same time we have our internal pressures of wanting to be where we feel we should be.”
With Saturday’s victory at Plainmoor also marking United’s first clean sheet of the new campaign, manager Gary Johnson made a point of highlighting his assistant’s role in that success. For Aaron though, he is more than happy for the players to take the plaudits.
“It’s the defenders and the goalkeepers that go and perform, and every single one of the players put in an effort to secure that clean sheet. It is a team effort to secure that clean sheet, so, the credit has to go to them, unfortunately, as I’d love to take it! They were brilliant and they have been – there’s just been a few moments against us, but all-in-all, we’re confident in the group we’ve got, who can keep clean sheets at this level, and let’s hope that there’s plenty more of that to come.
“The building blocks are there and we know what we can do. It’s about us as management, and as players, getting consistency in the performances, so we’d like to build on our 1-0 win going into this weekend. We know that to be successful in this division you have to go on runs, so we’re hoping that Southend was the start of a run – but every win you hope it’s the start of a run. We’ll go there confident, we’ve had a good week, and hope that we can start a mini-run, which will turn into a long-run.”
Speaking of the opposition and the match itself, Downes is under no illusions of the test in store.
“Every game holds its different things. They’ve improved their squad, as we feel we have. Both teams have the same manager, they feel they’re in a different position than they were at that stage [last season] to where we are now, so, we can look at that and we can see and take some positives and negatives from that, but at the end of the day we’re in a different time now, and we have to look at it from recently what they’ve been doing, and recently what we’ve been doing, and take it from there.
“It gives us confidence knowing that we can go to one of the title challengers, like last year, and get a result, and a lot of the boys in the changing room were part of that, so it’s nice knowing that we can do that. At the end of the day that’s history now, that’s been and done and we need to focus on Saturday.”