Manager Speaks (Tuesday Night)

[Flynny]

Manager Speaks

Posted on: Tue 24 Jul 2007

Tonight was a good workout. When you come up here it is always going to be competitive. It is in the nature of the Scottish players - they have got that competitive edge. This trip was arranged before I got to Leicester, but I have been absolutely delighted with it.

I came up here 20 years ago with Queen's Park Rangers - all I can remember is being spat at by the supporters. But here today it was nice. The people over at Troon have been superb to us. And from the playing point of view it has been a great workout.

You have to remember that all of our players got up this morning at a quarter to seven. They had 6:45am alarm calls. We were on the training pitch at a quarter past seven practicing our set plays. So that was a tester. No one was late and nobody moaned. We stood around on a pitch in Ayr, which was very fresh, and got the set plays done. We then went back out at a quarter past 10 to work on the attacking plays. Again there were no moans or complaints. We were then back on the bus again to come here.

We trained last night for two and a half hours. There has been no let up, but I didn't want any excuses. I wanted all those things to be tests, if you like, of their mental strength because weak people can use the getting up at 6:45am as an excuse for failure. People can use those things for what I call 'get out clauses' - you don't play well and you don't win and the reason was because of those things I have mentioned. But fair play to the players and all the squad. The substitutes and the people who weren't playing were in the dressing room before the game getting the players ready, encouraging, supporting them and backing them. And when they came in at the end of the game all the players who weren't playing were waiting for them in the dressing room to do the same again. So I have got quite a unified and tight squad, but there is still a lot to do.

This trip has all been pre-planned a long time before I got up to Leicester, but my people have actually come up to Scotland a couple of weeks ago and everything has been checked out before we came here. People came to this ground, the hotel and the training pitch to get everything sorted. All the food, the rooms and the arrangements - everything was done. This trip was meticulously planned before we got here to make sure that there were no hiccups.

At the moment the results are important because the winning mentality is good. But there is still a lot to practice, train and work on. The staff will be sitting in front of a computer when we get back to the hotel tonight to analyse the game. We will learn from that and go through it with all the players before our next game. There is still a long way to go and there is a lot of work to do. This is by no means anywhere near how good it will have to be or how good it will be.

Tomorrow we are going clay pigeon shooting to give them a break. I am not sure if it is a good idea that I go because the players will all have guns in their hands!

Take care

Martin

At first I thought all these were for MA to establish himself with the supporters not only as manager, but as "a bit of a character". He's got me properly convinced this isn't all for show, now, though. They're increasingly mundane (in a sort of good way) and it seems he genuinely just wants to keep in touch with the supporters and have them informed.

Of course the odd funny story is always a plus.