United boss Greg Abbott (GA) spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria'sJames Phillips (JP) and the News & Star's Jon Colman (JC) at Tuesday's open press conference for the local media, Abbott first talking about how the Blues have been getting on in training this week:
JP
You look in a lot better spirits than you sounded, I wasn't obviously there at the weekend, but you look like you have worked things through a bit?
GA
Well, we are working, we are working exceptionally hard to be honest and we have had a pretty good response. I was a bit worried on Friday, I looked at the players and they looked like they were feeling a bit sorry for themselves. But, we had a different type of training session yesterday to try to get some smiles on faces and some belief back in the group, and today that was probably the best training session we have had since the start of the season.
I am always open and I am always honest and I am always telling you what is going on, but as a group we generally train really, really well. I thought last week’s training was below par, not in terms of the effort, but in terms of the quality and the belief within the group, the confidence within the group. You can sometimes smell some danger and on Friday I called Graham Kavanagh and Tony Caig back because I said ‘listen, we just seem like there is a lack of confidence within the group and I am worried for us’.
We thought about what we could do different and there wasn’t a great deal of variety we could do with the group we had and we did get found out. But, it is done now, we have drawn a line underneath that. I am here now and we have worked exceptionally hard these two days and I have seen a terrific response. I feel a whole lot better about the group and about the work we have done, and hopefully it will take us into Friday’s game with greater confidence and greater belief.
Because, that group is more or less the same group that went to Doncaster and won and went to Oldham and won and went to Sheffield United and played them off the park. So, there is a team in there, but at the minute we have had a lot of issues that have gone against us but, listen, it isn’t the time for excuses. They are little reasons but I don’t want to harp on too much about them. I want to look forward, get everybody buying back in to what we are doing and changing the fortunes of the football club round very, very quickly.
JP
How are things shaping up in terms of getting some of your big players back, clearly one big player is definitely back in Lee Miller, how are the other shaping up on their fitness?
GA
I think we are going to be 99% at full strength on Friday, bar the obvious ones in Danny Cadamarteri and Chris Chantler, I think we are going to be almost there, and they will all play. If they are fit they will play and they know how we play and they now the way we will try to play and they have got confidence and they have got mental toughness, which I think is where we were a little bit weak over the last couple of games.
We are asking kids to do men’s jobs and it is unfair, and we love the kids here and we will to continue to progress and develop them, but we don’t want to be putting them in sevens or eights, we want to be putting them in in ones and twos into a winning team which makes life a whole lot easier. Hopefully we can work our way out of this little situation and get back to the type of team and club that we think we can be.
JP
You talked about after the game, I heard the interview, very passionate and very defiant but you said that this is perhaps as desperate as you have felt at Carlisle. Is there almost a case that that was almost a rock bottom at that stage and there is only sort of up now for Carlisle?
GA
Well, it can’t get much worse, it generally can’t. There is no point offering explanations and arguments even though there have been things that have gone against us. Everybody knows that and everybody wants to look at the whole lot, there will be a balanced view but ultimately this football industry is about results and performances, and ours haven’t been good enough. We have spoken to the players, we have drawn a line under it, we have to offer the fans a lifeline that things will get better, if they don’t then things have to change at football clubs, that is a given.
But, with what we have had, we have had tough things to deal with and we knew where we would be or we had an idea where we would be in terms of how tough the games would be, and they have been. As a manager actually nobody else feels sympathetic towards you, but there have been some nice phone calls to say listen, you have had that gone against you, that gone against you, dig deep. I am digging as deep as I possibly can but I will stand with the group and I will fight with that group and we will turn it round given time.
If we don’t then like I said to you, that is something other people have to look at and think if it is going to be something that needs to be altered. But, at the minute I think I am going to be there for Friday night, I am desperately, desperately wanting to turn this around and show people that the last five years haven’t been a fluke.
We have done exceptionally well and over the period we have had to let go some really, really decent players and there is a manager in the Premier League now who is finding it hard and he is getting a bit of stick and he has lost some of his best players, the Arsenal manager. It is difficult to replace them when you are not given the funds to get better than what you have let go, anybody that takes powerful players out of the teams, ultimately if they don’t replace them with better, will find life difficult.
But, you have to find a way of bridging gaps and he is trying to do it and I am trying to do it. I have got everybody back on Friday so reasons or excuses or explanations have to stop, actions have to take place and we have to go there and put Colchester under a massive amount of pressure in terms of trying to find a result for this club.
JP
One of the things that has underpinned your career is getting these reactions, getting these big results perhaps when you have needed them the most, is there a feeling that you need one of those perhaps on Friday?
GA
I would think so, I am not stupid, to some people at the minute I might appear that but I am actually not. We have done terrifically well as a football club with the resources we have had over the last six years and the places we have gone and the things we have done and the players that we have developed and moved on.
There is always going to be a time, a crackdown time when things become ultra tough and this is one of those times. But, we have done it before and we will do it again, because I have done it five or six times already, not I, I would say we, the backroom staff and the board. We have all worked together to try to find the solutions.
But, look at some of the circumstances we have had and they have been very, very difficult and I am not sure just changing a body in a certain place would make things overnight totally different. We know where we are and we know what situations we have to try to avoid, but we haven’t been able to do that. I hope that makes sense, not trying to be clever one little bit.
JP
What does it take in these scenarios then, what gives you that lift, what finds that performance where you have not managed to before?
GA
On a personal level it is a massive, massive situation where you feel like you are taking on the world. One man, can he beat the world? He is going to try, he is going to try, let me tell you now, he is going to try because we won’t take this. Graham Kavanagh and myself on Saturday night were probably as low as we have ever been, but we have never showed the players. On Monday they were probably expecting an absolute overhauling for the results and the performances.
They got comfort and in return for that we have demanded a response and today we got a massive, well Monday and Tuesday on the training ground we got a massive response. One of the players actually came up and said ‘we needed that, we needed that, we are low, we feel that confidence is a bit low but we just want to put it right and we want to put it right so badly’.
It is funny because the dressing room was as pumped up as I ever seen it before the game and then we make a couple of errors and we are 2-0 down after four minutes and 32 seconds. It is a tough for a manager then to rectify that type of situation, it is really is, it is not making excuses and it is no blame culture to anybody but it is very, very difficult in the mindset of the players we are at to rectify that.
It is gone, it is finished, done, we go into Friday in a completely different frame of mind. I am probably as bolshy, without trying to be awkward as I have been, and I don’t mean bolshy in a bad way, I mean bolshy in the most positive way to get this group right behind me to win a game of football, which the club needs at the moment.
JP
So, it is almost not a case of analysing why things have gone wrong in terms of trying to get the best out of the players, but just looking for a cup final performance and just looking for them to play like it really matters again?
GA
Yeah, we have got to get them playing cup final football without impinging pressure on them ,right, without putting pressure on them. Nobody can work under pressure, I have seen you crack under pressure, difficult, it is difficult, and that is not knocking anyone. People are scrutinised and put under intense scrutiny and pressure all the time and can never perform at the best of their ability. So, my job is to try to give them the importance of the game, but make sure they play without fear and pressure and go out and play and show us how good they are.
Like I said, the group had some fantastic results at the back end of last season and the players that have contributed to that, most of them are still here. So, that is where we have to be and sometimes they need somebody to lead them to the war and into the battle. When you lead somebody into battle you are hoping those troops fight properly and with a method and with a confidence that they can win it. It is, for me it is a war, it is a war, because we can’t lose too many more battles, we just genuinely can’t.
JP
In terms of those players then who are bringing the squad back up to sort of 99%, you will pardon me as I wasn’t here at the weekend, who might be back fresh then that we didn’t see last time out?
GA
All I am going to say is we have got near enough a full squad to pick from, and there is somebody else in the squad that has joined us today, which I am not going to tell you. If you find out you find out, but I want to keep it quiet, I don’t want anybody to know about it, but somebody who might give us a bit of a helping hand come the weekend as well.
But, it is up to other people to do their work, I am not on about the Carlisle people, I am on about the Colchester people, they need to not know anything about what we are going to do. We want to go there and we want to put them under pressure and we want to make sure we can put them on the back foot and protect our goal.
Can I just tell you that we did three 14 minute 11 v 11 situations today, three 14 minute periods, and we didn’t have one shot against us, right. That was an improvement wasn’t it and we actually had five one on one situations and we looked a whole lot better and the new player who was with us today said ‘you look a really good side’, I went ‘ do you want to see the DVD off Saturday you know’.
But, listen, there is optimism, like I said, I can only tell you that I thought we trained without belief and confidence last week, you could sort of smell that happening. I am telling you the truth, this week I also smell something happening but it is a bit rosier than it was last week, trust me, it just looks a bit better.
JC
Last weekend John Nixon told you in no uncertain terms obviously that you had to improve from that, as he spoken to you since the weekend?
GA
John has been sympathetic actually with what is going on but things have to improve. But, he is a pretty decent fella and the chairman [Andrew Jenkins] is a pretty decent person, we don’t have to fall out every time we lose but he has to make sure that he sees that there is a remedy there. It is no good being ill and having no medicine, there is some medicine there and hopefully it is coming back this week with the stronger players. It is not rocket science, it is not rocket science at all, our strongest players are fit, they are available, should give us a better chance of doing better than we have been.
JC
Have you been given any ultimatum from John or from the board?
GA
They want me to win games, they haven’t given me any ultimatum. I don’t care, I just try to win games and if I had been winning five I would still be trying to win the game, I wouldn’t think well I have won five so I am OK to lose one, there is no problem. What is an ultimatum? What is it? It is pressure, what are we talking about, pressure, pressure just brings on decreased performance.
So, they probably think, well shall we just hang him out and cause him more problems than he needs or shall we just stick with him until we think it is time to make a change? They might as well just do that, they probably might have an ultimatum in their own heads, they might have had their own ideas in their own heads. What is the point in telling me because do they think I am going to try any harder?
We need to try to do things better as a group, I don’t need anybody, I don’t need you, I don’t need James or anybody, it is not because I know it all, it is just common sense in the industry we are in. I don’t need to be reminded of this and that and the other, I don’t need anybody to tell us we have had a good game or a bad game. I don’t need anybody to write about it, I don’t need fans to comment on it because I actually know.
I am a dead, dead honest guy who takes the truth and works with the truth and doesn’t flavour anything and doesn’t shirk from anything. So, I don’t really need people in the street telling me what is going wrong because actually I know. If somebody in the street would tell me how to put it right then I might listen, there aren’t too many people out there with the people we have had available that have a situation that can be dead easy, and if we click our fingers then it can be better.
It isn’t, it might be a little bit better with the medicine coming back, that is only the truth, that is only the truth. They are hard facts, so that is what we have all got to sort of sit and live with and because I am sit in this chair you are in a bit of a firing line, which I accept that, it is the norm, it is the industry. Is it right or wrong?
Who cares, it doesn’t really matter, it is what people do. They might be cheering us if we win the next ten games on the bounce, they might be, they might be thinking I am a fantastic manager again. But, I won’t be any different, I will still be determined to win that eleventh game and I will still want to do the job properly.