Boro Player spoke to manager Gary Smith ahead of this weekend’s trip to Crewe Alexandra, and he pointed to confidence being key to improvement.
Speaking about his side’s position in the table, and how the season is going so far, Smith said, “There are one or two things that are upside down at the minute, however before the weekend I think we would have accepted with open arms the position that we were in – 2 points off the Playoffs. We’re now 5, but we’re still in a fantastic position and the key now is to turn this form around.”
He went onto say that he feels that “As many as half a dozen” of his player “who were playing extremely well and looked like promotion challenging players” at the start of the season are now “looking a little bit flat and of colour”, and admitted that reinstating the confidence in the side is a key part of getting back to winning ways.
He continued “It’s the same with anything in life, when your confidence dips you don’t quite get things done with the same sort of vigor and spring in your side that you did when you felt really good about yourself. Results do that to players; it’s not necessarily always how you’re playing. If we look back at how they started, as many as seven games ago we ran into a couple of difficult results - that puts a doubt in people’s minds. Then suddenly when you run into a team that you feel as though you should be beating, you don’t quite. You maybe draw or you don’t get the sort of output from the group that you’d expect and it’s just a knock on effect.
“The players that performed so well early on, they’re still the same people, they’re still capable of all of the same things, it’s just a matter of getting a bit more of a positive edge to their game and obviously that’s my job as much as anyone else’s.”
To hear the full interview, including Smith’s thoughts on the signing of Sam Hoskins from Southampton, sign into your Boro Player account now!