David Amoo on the importance of being in the right frame of mind
Forward David Amoo ended last season as the club’s top scorer and picked up a number of awards following what was an excellent introduction to the Blue Army through the first half of last season’s disappointing campaign.
We spoke to him about relegation and moving on as all eyes turn towards putting things right in July.
“I don’t think the word disappointing covers how bad it feels to get relegated,” he said. “It’s tough for everyone and it sent all away on a low. We kept trying to make things happen, right up to the last day, but it just wasn’t to be for us.
“However, we need to get over it and look toward next season now. There will be a lot of changes to the squad, plenty of new faces, and we have to use that to help us to move forward again.”
“There’s no point in us thinking about what could have been if we’d stayed in League One because we haven’t managed to achieve that,” he added. “We have to work hard to make ourselves a force at the right end of this division and we have to come back motivated and ready to do our jobs.
“League Two is a tough league, we all know that, but we can’t give ourselves too much time to acclimatise to it. We have to hit the ground running and that means being prepared to do a lot of our own work before the season starts.”
“I think the only way we can look at the way last season went is that it was a failure,” he said. “It’s the first time a lot of the lads have been through anything like that and I definitely found it to be tough on a personal level.
“It started really well for me but I think we all struggled a bit, particularly when we started to lose games from winning positions. There’s no doubt that the points we dropped in that way would have made a huge difference for us.”
“I’ve seen a few other people say that we’ve to get it out of our systems quickly and they couldn’t be more right,” he agreed. “There’s nothing we can do about what’s been and gone, but we can affect what happens next. It’s time for us to think positively and make sure we go into it in the right frame of mind.”
“I’d say we’re a better team than where we finished in the table but, when it comes down to it, the final positions don’t lie,” he commented. “We let ourselves down too many times and we paid the price for it.
“That’s why it’s so hugely disappointing. We should have won games that we drew but there’s no point going over it too much. What’s done is done and we have to look forward.”
“The hardest part of it is that we know how much it means to the fans,” he admitted. “We could see for a few weeks that they were hurting and it’s no consolation to them that we felt just as bad. We have to take the criticism on the chin, because we deserve it, and we have to show everyone that we can bounce back.
“There are a lot of lessons for us to learn from what happened and we have to make sure we take them on board. It’s up to all of us to come back hungry and determined to do well in July.”
“On a personal level I think I played some of the best football of my career through the first half of the season,” he said. “It’s just a shame that it didn’t carry on and I had to work much harder for my form after Christmas.
“It’s always nice to get a bit of recognition and I thank everyone who voted for me for the Player of the Year award. I really do appreciate that and it’s a huge boost to your confidence. It would have meant even more if we’d stayed up, but it’s still great that so many people chose to give it to me.”
And on the challenge ahead, he said: “We know League Two will be a different experience for us. We’re not going to go there thinking it’ll be easy, just because we’ve come from League One. We have to do it properly or we’ll find it even harder. We’ll definitely have to be ready for it.
“I think part of the process of us getting over what happened, and getting ready for next season, will be seeing which new players come in. I always find that to be quite exciting and I’m sure the fans do as well. It will almost be a new team out on the pitch so there’s plenty for us all to look forward to.”