The gaffer looks back on the season so far and ahead to Newport on Saturday...
After a short break between competitive games, Boro face a tough trip to Newport on Saturday, one of the form teams in the division.
Despite the obvious disappointment of exiting the FA Cup early, GW believes the camp have made the most of the time available to them.
“It was a very much needed two weeks. The team had been through a tough start in all sorts of regards. It’s difficult when you’re bringing lads together and they’re learning about each other and they’re learning about the management and what’s required.
“It was a point in time where we could just take stock. As they say, from wherever you are you can’t create a new beginning but you can create a new ending. The job we’ve had is to have a think about how we got to where we are, asses where we are and begin to put the plans in place for the next stage of our evolution. We believe we can get a lot stronger.
“The whole squad believes that it can do better, they all can see the improvements that we can make and they all believe in the improvements that we can make. That gives me a lot of encouragement because sometimes you look at a squad and they don’t actually think there’s another way, they don’t see a better tomorrow for themselves and they don’t believe in what they’re being asked to do but these lads do, they believe in a better tomorrow and I’m sure we’ll get there.”
One of the major problem areas for the team this season has been conceding late goals. In the last 15 minutes of games this season, Boro have only scored three goals, conceding nine. The gaffer puts it down to fitness issues which they’ve been working hard over the past couple of weeks to address.
“We’ve had a couple of real hard weeks, we’ve put in some really good smart work and I think a lot of the lads who were struggling have come a long way forward. It’s been very productive in that regard with the fitness issue; we tried to have a mini pre-season and they’ve committed themselves really well to it. Certainly up until Tuesday we had our foot right on the gas, we’ve taken it off today (Thursday) to get ready for the weekend but physically we’ve come a really long way.
Newport are on an impressive run of form where they’re trying to extend their unbeaten League 2 run to nine games but GW knows that a positive result is more than possible with a well carried out game-plan.
“They’ve been getting results and you have to judge a side on the results they’ve been getting. You don’t get results for no reason, you get them because you know what you’re doing and you’ve got a way of doing things, but a side is as good on the day as you let it be.
“When we’re on our game, when we’re doing what we do, very few sides go away saying they played well. That’s the way I like it to be, I like us to be able to nullify oppositions and I like us to be able to exploit their weaknesses. It’s up to us to get into the frame of mind and get into the winning way that we know we’ve got in us, whereby we do that to teams.”
Sign into Boro Player for the full press-conference with GW.