“Nothing will change with us just because we have gone top”– Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill ahead of trip to Woking
Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill believes that his side will stay consistent despite going top of the National League ahead of a trip to Woking this weekend.
Rovers have their first of a set of back-to-back away league trips with a visit to Woking following on from four home games in all competitions on the spin.
Forest Green moved to the top of the National League in their 3-1 win over Ebbsfleet United on Tuesday night. On whether anything changes now they are in first, Cotterill said: “No, nothing will change really, the team might maybe. Nothing will change with us just because we have gone top of the table. As I have said before we won’t take notice of any league positions or anything like that, it is nice that we are there, but it doesn’t mean too much at the moment.”
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Both Kyle McAllister and Liam Sercombe were forced off on Tuesday night following knocks in the game. On the progress of both, Cotterill said: “We will have to see with those, there will probably be a bit more of a key time with that on Friday.”
Cotterill was able to watch this weekend’s opposition last night in their 2-1 defeat away to Solihull Moors. Having had the opportunity to do so, Cotterill said: “It doesn’t happen very often and if you do get a chance to go and see them live it does help you. I know that you can’t always do that and you have to watch a lot of it on a laptop or whatever because the teams in your league nine times out of 10 are all playing at the same time on the same night. It was an opportunity to go and do that last night and looking back on it, whilst it was a late night back home, it was well worth the trip.”
Rovers have also now had a day longer to prepare for the game than their Surrey counterparts with them having played on Wednesday night.
“I have been in this scenario so many times where I have thought to myself ‘this is a bonus’,” Cotterill said on whether the extra day was advantageous. “The other team are playing on a Wednesday night and then you turn up and then they end up being sharper than you on a Saturday.
"Other times I have had it the other way around where my team have played on the Wednesday night and I turn around and think ‘how are they going to be and they have had another 24 hours rest’. Sometimes you can come down and then come down too much, the turnarounds I am neither here nor there on those turnarounds and that won’t make any difference to our preparation for the game.”
With Rovers now roughly a third of the way through the league season having played 15 games, it would be wondered if things take care of themselves during the main course of the season and not the beginning and the end of.
On whether that is the case, Cotterill said: “I think that the beginning sort of takes care of itself a little bit because everything is new and they are quite fresh and fit from pre-season and the end, whatever mix you are in, that takes care of itself. I think probably it is the bit in the middle where you have to keep them (the players) going.
“There won’t be any danger of me taking my foot off of the pedal. I don’t probably know any different so I think you just have to be consistent with your messages to the guys and hopefully they stay fit, stay confident and keep the cohesion going that we have already got. It is an honest and hard-working group that get on well together.”
With that consistency of message to the players, Cotterill said on the importance of it: “It is very important, what you must not do is duck and dive between results. Nine out of 10, what we tell them will be correct. They have lots of ideas now, lots of patterns and lots of solutions to things and hopefully they can keep them going.
"Sometimes, we will set up and a team will play different to the games that we have already seen and then the guys might have to find solutions early in the game. I think we have been through lots of permutations and formations and we will try and navigate our way around whatever is put in front of us.”
Rovers last played Woking in the 2016/17 season when they won 4-3 at home after a double from Omar Bugiel and goals from Christian Doidge and Keanu Marsh-Brown secured the result.