Joey, how do you look back on that game of football?
It was a game of two halves from our perspective. First half, on a really poor pitch – I think our pitch is crap at the minute – too much rain on it, very soft under foot and not really conducive to the type of football we want to play, our lads have had the best passing performance statistically in all of our time at the club in the first half, with 450-odd passes.
We were 2-0 up and looking like scoring a third, fourth and fifth. Cheltenham pretty much just sat on the halfway line and in their own half and they had no antidote to what we were doing.
We gave the lads a bit of praise at half time and asked for more of the same, but within three minutes of the second half we’ve managed to have a brain fart and we gave them an opportunity to gain momentum and belief and to get back in the game.
After that, credit to the lads, they got the job done, as tetchy as it was out there. It was all about taking three points and getting the job done, but we haven’t completed 100 passes in the second half.
To go from one extreme to the other is a bit concerning for me because when we get the ball down and play, I think we’re more than a match for anybody at this level. When we just keep kicking it long and we panic a little bit, we are really in the bottom echelons of the teams at this level.
Credit to Cheltenham, they kept asking questions and scrapping to get back in the game, but with the greatest respect to them, they should have been put in the ground four or five-nil. We’ve been guilty of giving them a leg up in the second half and from there, we’re a bit tetchy and nervy.
Against better teams, teams in the top 10 or top eight, you’re probably having to defend more manfully and maybe you’ve dropped two points there. Maybe, as we found out in the Exeter game, you’ve dropped three.
Lessons to learn, but a good start in terms of winning in the new year and the first half was excellent, but the second half, a lot of work to do.
Is it a confidence thing when the game changes so wildly?
I don’t know. For me, goals change games in any level you play at. We were in command and if you can weather it… No doubt Wade had a word with them at half time and they changed tactically and they made three subs.
If you can weather the first 15 minutes of that impetus, they realise they are going to lose the game. If you manage to add a goal in there, you are then thinking about adding a fourth or a fifth and it’s a relatively comfortable procession to the end of the game.
If you do what we did, which is literally gift them a goal – I have no idea what we were trying to do in that moment – then you give them belief and confidence and naturally, as anyone would with a shot at getting a point from a losing position, they’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
We get quite nervy because we’re in command of the game and we definitely don’t want them to score a second goal and get a point because if it was a boxing match, the towel could well have gone in at half time.
The front two look good, don’t they?
Yeah, they are excellent. We are really fortunate.
I think Aaron at this moment in time, as we saw during the week, it looks like he has got his mojo back again. He looks like he can score or make a goal in virtually every single game we play in.
We’ve added big Josh to that and I’ve spoken really well of Josh for a long period of time, but the partnership the two of them are forming, the goals they are getting and the chances they are creating is massive because if you’ve got a quality frontline like we’ve got, you’ve got a chance of winning any game of football.
With those two boys in there, we probably carry as much quality as any team in the division in those areas. I truly believe that if they are not the best in the division, they are certainly on the podium.
Does it concern you in any way, particularly with Aaron Collins having such a good year? Could January be an interesting month for him?
No, we want our players to do well. We want teams knocking at the door to try to buy our players because that is a sign of success and progress.
The good thing is because of the way we are we’ve got contractual security. In the past, I don’t know what the case has been, you get a bid for a player and they’re unsettled.
Aaron is really happy, I don’t think there is any ambition from him to move in January. Good players don’t tend to move in January, but that’s not to say someone in the Championship might come and offer us a fee that we can’t turn down.
We’ve got a very wealthy owner so I can’t see Wael wanting to get rid of him, wanting to sell him or cash in on him.
If someone comes for him, Scott Twine went to Burnley last year from MK Dons. You’re talking those kind of numbers, that is the reality.
That will mean Azza will be getting a few million quid in his pocket over the course of his contract, so it’s a win-win for everybody.
Don’t forget this time 12 months ago he just started finding where his feet are. You can move a long space in a short period in this game and he is a talisman for our team and at some point, he will either improve and he will get in the Championship with us because we get there, or somebody is going to buy him to play in the Championship because he is a player that has shown in every moment that he is certainly capable of playing at a higher level.
You can rack up numbers at this level with a League One skillset, but that first goal with the angle of his body to hold off a defender and make a good ball into a great ball is one of the things that sets him apart, isn’t it? That ability to turn half-chances into goals.
It’s a helluva ball from Sam Finley and a great run from Az, but he’s got a lot to do when he gets there. Those are the bits he didn’t have when we first got him.
He was a spectacular long-range goalscorer but he didn’t really get those box predator moments. I’ve been saying to him ‘They all count the same’. A 40-yard screamer is worth the same as a two-yard tap-in and if you want to be a 20-plus striker, you’ve got to get those scrappy tap-ins.
But Az can go both ways, that’s why he’s a real threat. He runs like the wind with great size. He constantly gets battered but keeps getting up.
He’s got elements of (Jack) Grealish about him, he’s got elements of really good strikers about him, and so I do think he is a unique player. I really do.
He can score long-range goals off both feet. The heading bit of it, we need to work on with him because that is another tool you can score goals with.
But to see his progress as a man and as a footballer in the past 12 months has been fantastic to watch and you’ve seen in the past two games he is just getting better and better.
That’s what happens when you have good players around you and as I say, with Josh Coburn, Ryan Loft and John Marquis up there with him, they have helped bring out another level to Aaron’s game.
He’s got to keep getting better. There is no ceiling. The only ceiling you have is in your mind.
He’s got a maverick ability where he scores and creates for himself, but it is the partnership play as well. He connects so well with Josh, like he did with Elliot Anderson last season. He seems to bring the best out of the players around him and it’s a symbiotic thing.
He’s not selfish, is he? In the second half, a ball is put in the channel and he chases it down and hustles the lad and ends up winning us a corner.
People who score loads of goals and assists, they don’t really do that. They go ‘That is for somebody else who hasn’t got my skillset. My job is to score and make goals’.
He doesn’t have that. He has got a real humility about him and he is a fantastic team player.
He can get even better. There is so much he can do better in and out of possession, it’s untrue. He has enormous scope.
He never misses a day’s training, he’s always got a smile on his face, and he does everything right and runs himself into the ground for the team. If he gets in behind and someone is in a better position, he will pass to them. He doesn’t take penalties.
We are lucky to have the boy in our team and watching his progress in the past 12 months has been pleasing, but the six months before that were as well, watching him go through the dip, the hardest part when people give up and lose confidence.
He didn’t. He turned up every day and trained, even when he was missing chances and there were groans and he kept getting in there and backing himself. And then he slams one in from 30 yards with his left foot against Oxford and he hasn’t looked back.
Everyone’s questioning how he is going to handle League One because he hasn’t played there before, but he’s shown. Everyone’s asking now how he will handle the Championship because he hasn’t played there. Well, give him a go.
We gave him a go and look what happened. I believe if you give people opportunities, the good ones take them and Aaron has certainly been a phenomenal addition to our team on a free transfer from Forest Green. That’s good business, hey.
Is Lewis Gibson OK?
He felt his thigh a little bit. Obviously, with the load of games and that pitch for two days, that’s a swamp out there.
Trying to walk on it to get a feel, it’s really bad for football. It’s not like our pitch. There is a problem with the drainage, I think, after the deluge.
The game was touch and go last night and we were told at 7pm the game was going to be called off if it carried on raining because it’s that wet. Fortunately, it relented and the game was on, but the groundsmen have had a battle with it.
For Gibbo, the load and the pitch have made him feel his thigh. He doesn’t think it’s that much. We’ll get him scanned.
It was the right call for him to come out of the game because the last thing we want is him getting a long-term one because he is a massive player for us.
Transfers and contracts, any news on that front?
We are grafting away.
You said exits were a priority. Harvey Saunders wasn’t in the squad, neither Alfie Kilgour nor Zain Westbrooke. Is there anything happening with them?
Trevor Clarke is the same, he’s injured.
There are a few lads and they are in a tight bind at the minute because we are light on bodies and it’s a tough period. In the next few weeks, it will unfold and by the end of the window all of those lads will be wanting to play football elsewhere.
But as football sometimes does, the story can be entirely different in a week’s time or a day’s time.
We will work to get those lads the opportunities, but also we need to make sure that our group and our squad depth is not compromised.
In the interim, we’re active at the moment. We usually tighten up in the January and add the bits we need to get better, and this January will be no different.
After two games where you found a way to lose, you must be pleased to just about avoid that again and start 2023 with a win?
Yeah, I really am. It was really important we got back to winning ways. The weather, the pitch, the load of games, the way we lost the last game here, the disappointment and everything that goes with it, it was just important we won today.
We know we can play some really good stuff. Just look at the first half, there were some really good passages of play on a poor pitch. Second half, we got a bit nervy and we made a mistake that cost us a goal and then we had to show a different side.
I’m pleased with it. Beefy could have gone into the washing machine there and his head could have gone and he could have carried on making mistakes. He didn’t, to be fair to him, he dusted himself down.
He cares deeply about his profession and his craft and he’s gutted in there because they were getting two days off if he kept a clean sheet, so they are not anymore and they’re all shouting ‘Thanks Beef!’
But we’ve got work to do. We’ve got Cambridge coming up and they are fighting for their lives and it’s another opportunity to progress our team. Work to do but a great start to the new year and a finish to what was a fantastic year.
The stadium was full, back-to-back and Gasheads are happy. We’ve just got to keep getting better and as I say, the best is yet to come. We’ve got so much improvement to come as a team and as a football club.
I can’t wait to get stuck in but that’s the perfect start.
What was James’ explanation for what happened?
I haven’t asked him because I don’t think there is an explanation. He just said ‘Sorry’, which is probably all he can say. There is no explanation for what he does, especially after what he got told in the dressing room two or three minutes before he went out.
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