United manager Keith Curle spoke about the need for a positive attitude at his Friday pre-match press conference as the team continues to prepare for what is another important game against Colchester United.
“It’s been a good week,” he said. “The group is over the shock and disappointment of what happened last Saturday. The players knew they had to deal with it, so we did the video analysis to allow us to reaffirm the general principles of how we want to play.
“Now it becomes a case of making sure we move on from the disappointment. We’ve spoken again about making the right decisions at the right times because that is what makes teams successful at every level. It’s when we make wrong decisions that it costs us.”
“We went through that and the focus very quickly changed from last weekend to what we want to do against Colchester,” he continued. “Some of the frustration we’ve had recently is that our approach play has been getting better, but it’s been the use of the ball in the final third that’s let us down.
“That’s changing, and what we’re doing, as we always have, is coming up with game plans for the players to implement, which we’re then asking them to deliver. We’ve said it before, but we know we need to go on a run of games so that we can pick up the points we need.”
Looking ahead to what we can expect from the Saturday afternoon game, he said: “I think Colchester will come here not to get beat. It’ll be a very close, tight encounter for the first hour of the game.
“They’re above us in the league and they’ll want to maintain the gap. We need to score goals to win the game, but we need to do it without being punished at the other end. They’ve switched their formations on a few occasions and they’ve gone with three at the back, five at the back and a flat back four.
“They’ve also changed their focal points up front, so they have some decent options. We know about that and, on the day, it comes down to how we perform and how we play our own game.
“It’s a home game and it’s a great opportunity for us to take points. All I can ask is for everybody to get on board and play their part. As a team we will be committed and we know we need to give a performance that’s worthy of the support we get.
“There are bound to be periods of the game where there are grumblings, but we’re determined to do what we can to get the fans on our side. The tempo of training has been excellent, which leaves us feeling very positive, and it shows a good mentality within the changing room.
“We have a fantastic run-in ahead of us and it gives us a great opportunity to go for the play-offs. Things need to go our way with other results, but if we can get on the run we’ve been talking about we’ll find that the picture will completely change. That’s what we need because that’s when belief and momentum really starts to build.”
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