John Massino
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
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It's looking at certain games and seeing what's the best way to exploit the opposition.
Whenever we've had good results and good performances, we've largely stuck with the same lineup.
There's been a couple of things which have changed depending on personnel and injuries, but we've had a couple of decent runs since the turn of the year.
After we played Arsenal, we went on that mini run where it was Sheffield Wednesday, Watford, Southampton and West Brom.
We'd fallen on a team we thought was working and we liked, unfortunately in the West Brom game Colby picked up an injury, and we picked up a couple of other ones too.
So we've had to change those things around, but, by the same token you can't just keep in going by what's worked for you in the past.
It worked in certain parts of the season, but we've searched for the formula in the past few games to try to tweak things, and find solutions to our problems.
We've got options there, we've got different players who can fit the slot.
There's Chappers, Seg, Swifty and even Jacob Brown's done a stint in there.
I think where we've been over the past few weeks is we've been controlling games and getting the ball into the final third, but then we've not had quite enough final product and attacking impetus.
That's why we've tried to change a few things in those attacking positions so that's where the rotation of the team selection will come from.
John Massino is asked when and for how long he plans on playing Conor Shaughnessy over this period of time when we've got quite a glut of games.
And is he in any way lured into the idea of saving him for the Oxford game?
The dilemma of when to play Shaughnessy and for how long is one of the reasons why we pay our manager a good wage.
Because it's a decision that I suspect none of us would really like to have to actually make.
Obviously Shaughnessy himself is going to be in on the plan there and the medics as well.
And we also have to look at the cover that we have for Shaughnessy.
If John Messina decides not to start him against Norwich, but to save him for the Oxford game, have him on the bench perhaps in case we're 1-0 up with 20 minutes to go at Norwich and we decide that we'll take those three points and so we'll shore up our defence by bringing him on.
But what we don't want to do is risk him getting crocked because he's a player who looks as though he's going to be out for two weeks and it turns into six months.