More on mindset from Graham Kavanagh
United manager Graham Kavanagh spoke to us at the Thursday morning press conference.
"We've had a good week's training," he said. "The game on Tuesday was a good exercise because it meant that some of the lads got minutes under their belt that they needed and it's given us a few selection issues for the weekend.”
"We're coming into a difficult period with a couple of long distance away games,” he added. “Results like last weekend will probably happen every now and again because we know we aren't the finished article just yet.
“Last Saturday was a realisation to me that we can't take anything for granted even though we have built up some momentum. It proves that everybody can beat everybody in this league.”
"You've got to get into the mindset that the performance within each game may differ,” he explained. “Teams will play against us using all sorts of tactics and different formations but we need to be able to adjust to that and impose ourselves on the game.
"The confidence was very low when we took over so changing the mindset of the players so that they could start to achieve that was important. We thought we'd turned a corner after we managed to bounce back at MK Dons but the Bristol City result shows that the process will take a number of months rather than a number of weeks.
"The reaction this week has been very good. We haven't allowed them to dwell on the result because, as much as I was disappointed after the Oldham game, I couldn't really criticise them too much after the Bristol City game. We were beaten by the better team on the day in that one.”
“I have to say that the attitude of the lads has been first class,” he concluded. “We are going to get setbacks, because that’s the nature of the game, but they really have bought into what we’re trying to do.
“In terms of team selection for the weekend, we still haven’t finalised anything. We’ll keep looking at the group over Thursday and Friday morning and we’ll take it from there. There’s obviously a determination to get a positive result going into the weekend and that will be the case whoever is picked.”
United Player subscribers can see a series of video interviews with Graham Kavanagh now. Click HERE to go to the Player platform. Follow the same link for more information on United Player, and to subscribe.
Click HERE to see a clip from this interview on our YouTube channel. Follow the same link for more FREE content right from the heart of the club.