Manager ahead of the Bournemouth trip
United manager Greg Abbott gave us his thoughts on the weekend trip to Bournemouth ahead of phase one of the long journey on Friday morning.
“The message for our lads this weekend is to keep our run going,” he said. “The recent hard work and effort has been rewarded with the points we needed, but we owe it to everybody to see this out properly.
“Bournemouth have had a fantastic season and they are deservedly in one of the poll positions. We saw earlier in the season that they like to get forward and attack in numbers, so our job will be to do exactly what we did in the last three away games. We’ll need to get tight and make sure we do the work off the ball to stop them from building up any momentum.
“The atmosphere is going to be fantastic and it will be as much about handling the occasion as it will be about playing our game. They have a home sell-out but I’m willing to bet that our four or five hundred will do their best to match them. Our supporters have been magnificent for us this season because they’ve had to show a lot of patience. It hasn’t been the season any of us wanted but we genuinely say thank you for that.
“I’m not surprised at all about how well Bournemouth have done. Eddie [Howe] knows all about the club and they have some excellent players there. Like I say, they are almost over the line but we aren’t going there to give it to them easily. I challenged the lads to finish the season off unbeaten and that’s what we are going there to achieve.
“It’s another one for us all to look forward to. There’s always something at stake at this stage of the season and we know that our lads have their own reasons for wanting to get a result. They’ve shown at Sheffield and Doncaster that big occasions don’t affect them and the fact that it’s the last home game for Bournemouth doesn’t even come into it. It’s another match for us to try and get a result.
“Our training sessions this week have been about making sure that everyone is ticking over and in the right frame of mind for another long journey and another tough game. We’ve done the work and we’re ready now, and we’ll hopefully go there and respond to the party atmosphere in a positive way.”