Gary O’Neil says the hard work his squad are putting in this pre-season is with the aim of entertaining their supporters even more next season.
The Old Gold’s training camp in Marbella is nearly over and was capped off with a 1-0 win over Como 1907 in their first training match of the summer. That win, courtesy of Matt Doherty’s header, came after a gruelling week of double sessions, work in the gym and running, and O’Neil, speaking from the Marbella Football Center, was pleased with where his squad are at.
On winning training match one
“I was really pleased. I thought we played well for large parts, scored a really good goal first half which was disallowed and wasn’t offside. Lovely movement from Jorgen, lovely ball from Pablo, and it’s disappointing it was wrongly chalked off because it would have been nice for Jorgen to get off the mark. Then we scored a good goal second half.
“There’s a lot we still need to improve on, but the group were out there trying their best to do exactly what we’ve set out to do this pre-season and we want to take it into the season. We had some good individual performances today.
“We didn’t prep for it like a game. The lads were working hard yesterday, running and covering an awful lot of distance. It was like a training session for us, but there were some bits in there that were good and lots that we still need to tidy up of course, with it being the first game back. But pleased with the exercise.”
On training showing in the match
“The good thing is when it’s in a controlled environment like our training pitch, we can work on situations we can control and there’s less pressure, so then it’s nice to see how the lads respond when they’re playing in a game and the opposition have lots of control in how they press and play. We dealt with most of the problems well, they created a few chances we made a few errors for – lots of it was very good and lots of it I’m desperate to improve next weekend.”
Gary O'Neil addresses the incident that overshadowed our first pre-season training game.
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On the full week in Marbella
“I am pleased. The lads have worked unbelievably hard, and I mean unbelievably hard. We put some real tough sessions into them and spoke to them at the start of pre-season around what we needed to get from the next six weeks. The first thing is fitness always and the next thing is an understanding, so when we go into the season, we understand exactly what happens when someone does this, then what the next person needs to do.
“We need to build that chemistry, we’ve got a lot of new faces, some young players, some back from loan, so there were disjointed bits in there, but players trying to do what we’ve asked them to do to the best of their ability. Then it’s up to us to get to work and improve it for the Emirates in a few weeks’ time.”
On the new lads settling in
“They’ve bedded in well and we have two really young ones in Rodrigo and Pedro. They did well in the game, both have taken on the information well and shown a certain level of understanding after just one week and, like the rest of the group, the amount of work they’ve put in this week is incredible.
“It’s been a tough week for them, no real let up, every day we’ve had football, running and gym. They’ll have come into today’s game feeling tired and not at their peak, so to produce a decent performance and play some good stuff was positive. It’s nice to win, as always you want to win games and I think we deservedly managed to win 1-0.”
On an exciting schedule ahead
“I’m excited to see it progressing. Weirdly I’m excited to see people get it wrong so I can help them and excited to see people get it right. We’re trying to build something we think can make us successful this year and hopefully entertain the fans.
“I’m sure the last year they enjoyed a lot of it and we want to keep it that way. We have some real talent. Between now and the end of the window I’m sure there’ll be some movement in and out. The group at the moment, with the lads who’ve come back from loan, you come back and are unsure of your future, but the way they’ve come back and approached their work has been really good, so I’m delighted with the whole group.”
