Boro Player spoke to Gary Smith today as the manager looks ahead to Saturday’s tie at home to Colchester United, and he is as keen as ever to get all three points.
Speaking about the current form in the side, Smith alluded to the tight nature of the games and the fact that the defeats are narrow, and on the mood in the camp he said “There isn’t a problem at all, unfortunately at the moment we are finding ourselves on the wrong side of results but my job is two-fold – the first is to make sure that we turn those results that have gone against us into something more positive, somehow and someway we just have to find a foothold in a result and in a game that just gives everybody that little bit of belief and sparkle that we had at the beginning of the season.
“The second one is to make sure that we keep our direction; where we are going. What we were achieving in the first part of the season was quite remarkable, and I think everybody would have looked at it and 9 out of 10 people would have said that it was unachievable, but we got ourselves into a great position.”
He continued, “The biggest disappointment at the moment, for everyone, is not that we’re losing games and it’s not that everybody is down in the mouth. It’s the disappointment of losing the opportunity that we had created for ourselves. Which was, to push on again and maybe fight for that top six. Everybody is pretty disappointed that it might have gone away from us and it’s about checking ourselves now, it’s stopping the rot, it’s getting back into a grove again and it’s feeling that belief about the group. There is no doubt about it, there are good enough players in that changing room, we have got a strong enough squad and there is no doubt in my mind that we have big enough characters.”
In recent years it seems to have been constant success for Stevenage, and Smith sees no reason why that can’t continue in the recent future, but added that off the field the club continues to develop.
“There is a hell of a lot of work that has gone on and an awful lot of resources have gone into the staffing, the stadium, the new training ground, all of those things are taking an edge and a drain off of the financial side of the club. I think the fans will have seen us in second and third spot earlier in the season and they are as disappointed as we are that unfortunately we haven’t been able to maintain that. There is no doubt that if we can finish the season off in a good vein of form that everyone, including the players, fans and staff alike, will go away in the summer and look forward to the next phase of a group being rebuilt.”
To hear the full interview simply login to your Boro Player account now.