Adam Collin looks ahead to the weekend
Keeper Adam Collin heads into the weekend hoping that he’ll be able to continue with his impressive run of consecutive appearances since he took the number one shirt from Lenny Pidgeley just under three years ago, but he knows he has a battle on his hands as young stopper Mark Gillespie continues to chip away in the background.
He said: “I look forward to every season and I just want to keep my run of games going for as long as I can.
“Hopefully I’ll do that and I think previous targets for clean sheets are always in the back of your mind when you get to the first game. If you can break any record it would excellent but we all know the clean sheet one would be a massive help to the team. It’s one we definitely have to go for.
“Mark [Gillespie]has kept me on my toes all the way through and this season more than any other he’s going to be real competition. All I can do is get on with my own job and do what I can to stay in the team.”
And with the preparation work all but complete it’s now down to what happens when the lads cross the white line on Saturday.
“It’s been a hard six or seven weeks but we’ve all enjoyed it, and it’s all about what happens at the weekend now,” he agreed. “Everything we’ve done has been aiming towards this and hopefully it’ll all be worth it with the result we get.
“If we can continue to progress through this season as we have over the last few years then it should be another good one for us.
“It’s going to be a tough league and there are a few teams who have spent quite a bit of money, so we’ll just have to see how it all pans out. I don’t think there’s anything for us to be too scared of but it’s up to us to do things right.”
Speaking about his own form, he said: “I enjoyed the Morecambe game because I haven’t had a great deal of pitch time. When I have been on there hasn’t been too much to do, so that was a better test for me. We got beat but, on a personal level, I had plenty to do in that one and I thought I did fairly well.
“There’s a definite edge to what we’re doing now though. We’ll do our final team shape today and there’ll be plenty of short and sharp work, and it’s a case of fine tuning everything.
“Like I say, we just want to push on and have a good season.”
United Player subscribers can see a video interview with Adam Collin later today. To find out more about United Player, and to subscribe, click HERE.