As the Blues continue to look for the consistency in performances and results which will see them start to climb the League Two table manager Steven Pressley spoke this week about the extra work being done on and off the field with the squad, with improvement in every area at the forefront of his mind.
“We’re doing a lot of work in the afternoons with our young players, and we’re tirelessly trying to improve them,” he said. “We’re conceding far too many goals, we’re aware of that, and we saw on Tuesday night that sometimes a little bit of naivety can creep in.
“That’s fine, because these players have to learn. I was a young centre-back myself, I know how you grow with experience and how you improve with games. They’ll only improve with games.
“There’s a lot of unseen work done as we continually try to improve them. We get satisfaction in seeing them improve. It will take time, it doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re seeing forward steps being taken and that’s really pleasing.
“We conceded immediately after the break on Tuesday and that’s another learning curve for our young players. We only learn by making mistakes and understanding how to improve from them. I made a million mistakes but as long as you learn from them, that’s the important thing.”
“That’s why the video analysis sessions we do are so important,” he told us. “They need to see and understand the good and bad points from their game. We’re looking to create strength in depth in our squad by improving the good young players we have.
“If I didn’t work hard with these players and didn’t see them improving, I could accept certain aspects. But we work hard with them, tirelessly. When I see them improving, game by game, I take a lot of satisfaction, as do my staff, and we’ll continue to do that.”
“As an example of what we do, I had an analysis meeting on Monday and I only showed the group one clip,” he explained. “It was the free-kick we conceded a goal from at Bradford.
“I told them that we work so hard as a group for five days, and for five days the staff work so hard in preparation, and that one moment can put all of that work to bed.
“And I sometimes think with younger players of today, those that are coming through the systems, they don’t understand how important these moments are in football. There’s the 90 minutes of work on the Saturday, the five days’ preparation, everything else that goes into the game, these moments are so crucial.
“I showed them that clip and we’ve talked about a number of things on it, and I think if we can improve on these moments we can be a good team. They are the very big moments we have to improve on.
“We’re doing a lot of good things but you can’t give up moments like that. That was the analysis. It was one clip. Shortest ever, but right to the point.”