Manager Keith Curle on recharging the batteries and trialists
Manager Keith Curle spoke to us about sending his players away on a mini-break ahead of the next phase of the build-up package.
“It’s sometimes difficult to understand how hard pre-season is on a player, both physically and mentally,” he said. “You get players with slight knocks and niggles who don’t want to fall behind. That means they’re prepared to go through the pain barrier and do that little bit extra.
“I want the players to shut down for three or four days, get rid of all of those aches and pains, and come back feeling fresh, with a healthy mind and body, and knowing they’re about to push on.
“They’re going to need to absorb a lot of technical and tactical information going forward and I want them to be in a good frame of mind to do that.
“There’s still a lot of hard work ahead but the emphasis will shift to what I call the more enjoyable side of it, because we’re going to be putting things in place which will give us our foundation for the start of the season.”
And on trial players Kevin Osei, Joe Thompson and Nicky Walker, he said: “The trialists will have a couple of days off with the rest of the group and then they’ll be back with us.
“They’ll certainly be used for a period of time in the first game and we’ll look at how they do. They’ll have been with us for a number of weeks by then and we’ll have seen them in our own 11v11 games as well.
“I’ll have a good idea whether or not I can take them any further forward at that point.”
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