Huddersfield Town (A): Press Conference Notes

[The Joker]

Andy Scott Quotes:
“We’ve done a lot of defensive work this week, to try and eliminate some of the things they would have seen at Charlton last week. We changed it around a bit and probably had the two best chances of the game.

They couldn’t break us down, which is what we are about and we attacked with pace too. I thought we were very positive in what we did going forward and we looked solid and I was very pleased with it.

Well Charlie felt a bit tired! We worked hard with him on Monday and he played on Tuesday. He was a bit disappointed to only get 70 minutes then, but this is his pre-season. We rested him Wednesday and looked after him on Thursday and Friday.

There were long spells where he felt sharp and there were spells where we didn’t quite get the ball up to him as much as we wanted to.

It is something I can change around. Having looked at the reports on Huddersfield they like to throw men forward and we are very pacy on the counter attack with two wide men who can travel with the ball and get into their half and exploit their weaknesses.

Sam Saunders and Danny Foster missed out today and Carl Cort was injured. Obviously Sam and Danny were disappointed but we’ve got a squad now that is capable of challenging each other to push each other forward. Each game presents an opportunity for different players.

Sam Wood had a couple of errors early in the game, but I think what people don’t realise is that after he made those errors he was outstanding. I’ve got 100% faith in him. He was one of those players I brought to the club and two years ago he was playing non league for Bromley.

His physical, mental and tactical improvement is a credit to everyone at the football club but probably mostly to him. He has taken everything on board.

Huddersfield have spent a hell of a lot of money and we knew they would try and exploit us from the wide areas which we combated. That is why I put James at right back and while they kept swapping their wingers over, the crosses they did get in we defended very well through the work we did this week. The lads probably deserved to keep a clean sheet and it is another tough one out of the way.

Yes, we are disappointed we haven’t won the game, to be honest. They had a shot in the first five or six minutes that was tipped over. Jordan had a header over the bar and they had one cleared off the line.

But the two clearest chances came to us and with a bit more composure six or seven yards out and we could have gone on to win the game.

We kept them at bay and didn’t really look like we were going to concede. The whole team defended very well and that is what we have to do. We know we’ve got the ability to go and score goals and create chances.

Yes, I’m always disappointed to concede goals. We’ve got to look at the first seven games we’ve played in the league and if we had said we would have 10 points everyone around Brentford would have been ecstatic with that. But we’re a little bit disappointed that we haven’t got more points.

It’s the nature of the squad and of me that we always want to improve and pick up more points. Inevitably we want to get out of this league as soon as we possibly can. It might take a while to do that but as long as we are learning from every game then we’ll get there in the end.

Ryan Dickson is close but it is one of the medial ligaments and if he gets a knock on it, he would be set back a couple of weeks so we are being careful with him.

Kabba and MacDonald played together in the reserves on Tuesday and did OK, but there is still a lot more to come. They are still nowhere near 100% fit. I just thought a little more experience was required today, especially after losing Carl to injury.

They worked hard and held the ball up well. There are some things we need to work on, but they will come. With centre forwards you need to build partnerships and it doesn’t happen overnight. I’m sure they will relish the opportunity to play together again.

No, Carl took a knock against Charlton last week and by Thursday the swelling hadn’t gone down so it wasn’t worth risking him and we hope he will be fit for the next game.”