Fixture pile-up a major concern

Latics’ assistant manager writes for Chron Sport every Friday
MK DONS is another game that is in doubt due to the weather, but our training this week has been geared towards playing tomorrow.

Dons are in the middle of a bad patch, with a few players injured and Aaron Wilbraham suspended.

It is one we will be going there to pick up three points from.

At the same time, they had a good start to the season and have been up there around us for most of the campaign. They are good at home and we are expecting a difficult game.

One of the biggest problems we face now as a result of the recent postponements is that with the backlog of fixtures, it looks like we may have to play eight games in January.

That could cause us a major problem with the squad we have got and it is something we will have to just deal with on a game-by-game basis.

We are always looking at new players. We are constantly on the telephone asking about which players are available and when they are playing so we can go and watch them.

Especially with Paul Butler the chief scout, he will go and watch the majority of games and a lot of information comes back to Paul Dickov and myself.

We have looked back at our matches this season using Prozone statistics and as far as I am concerned, there are two or three sets of figures that I take on board from that.

The players are sometimes more interested in them, principally those that show the amount of ground they cover during the 90 minutes.

You can take what you want out of that — there is an argument to say that if you keep the ball, you don't need to run as far.

But the most important statistic by far is the score after 90 minutes and you don't need Prozone for that!

It is a good tool to have, but you can look too deeply into it sometimes and end up getting lost in the software.

We took on Blackburn Rovers in a behind-closed-doors friendly on Tuesday and it was a good game and a really positive work-out for us.

We played with two separate XIs, playing 45 minutes each and both sets of players took the game seriously, which was good.

The players needed to play some football and it was important to get game-time under their belt.

It was a strong Blackburn side and most of the players they put out had first-team experience, so it was a valuable exercise.


TRUSTING IN THE FANS: Last week's meet-the-fans event with the Trust was a very good evening.
There were some good questions thrown at us and Paul and I are all for it, talking football with fans like that.

It is good for supporters to listen to the management of their team.

But it is also good for us to try to get to know what the fans are thinking and what they are looking for out of us and also out of the players.