CONTACT WITH THE OWNERS
“I have regular contact with the owners, and they are fully supportive. We have a collective understanding that we know the short-term, medium and long-term of where we need to be heading and what we need to be doing, but for me, I never not take accountability. We have got to be winning games. You always have to be a manager and a head coach. There can be no sentiment, there can be no excuses, but trust me, I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t know I was going to be in the man to turn it around, and I’m excited for the future.
“I might not seem that now at the minute because we’re having some tough knocks, but I am excited about where I am going to be taking this. I didn’t come back to ruin my second legacy at this club; I came back to be successful, and I am giving everything, and my staff are giving everything. We’re going through a really, really tough time of things at the minute, but I thank the supporters for sticking with us, get behind us on Saturday, and hopefully we’ll put on a performance that they can be proud of and make sure the negativity around the place is solely on my shoulders to make sure that my group start winning football games.
“You look at any football club, if you’re not winning games, it becomes a pretty negative environment and the only way you change that is by performing and winning. So, I’m working hard with the owners on that and have regular communication with the owners and Ricky Martin. We all understand the situation we are in, and we all understand that it’s up to me to get my team performing.”
UNDERSTANDING FROM THE PLAYERS
“You want to be winning games. We’ve got Notts County, and then we’ve got a couple of cup games, but we want to go into those cup games on the back of three points. I have to change the negative environment, and you can only do that by winning. One of the pleasing aspects for me is that I know the culture and the environment in the changing room is a hell of a lot better. The players are taking accountability; there are no excuses from them, and that’s what I want to be hearing, and that’s what I want to be seeing because that’s important.
“If I had a group of players in there that are kidding themselves and thinking it’s acceptable, then we’re in big trouble, but we’re not, and they understand that and they understand the hardest thing to do is to make sure that every day we’re at it with the intensity levels in training to get ourselves through this.”
