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Micky Mellon says that his side need to start converting their goalscoring opportunities if they want to turn recent draws into wins.
He discussed this as well as a range of topics in this week’s press conference ahead of a trip to Northampton Town on Saturday.
“We’ve got a lot of good work in this week on the grass. Obviously, it’s difficult when you’re playing Saturday, Tuesday so this week we’ve got a lot of good work in. A lot of good individual work in. It will hopefully move the group along; we’ve got a good amount of graft in”.
Tranmere’s last outing was against Burton Albion in the Papa John’s trophy over 10 days ago in what was a decent performance despite being beaten on penalties.
“You’re gutted that you’ve lost because we played so well in the game. We performed really well. To go to a League One club and perform the way we did and then go out on penalty kicks was a hard one to take.
“But you have to just move on and look at the things which we did well and the things that we can improve on, but certainly, we performed really well and we were really pleased with the performance. If we can just put the ball in the net when the opportunities come, I think that’s the stage that we are at now. We are creating really good chances so if we can just finish them off now then we’ll be doing well.”
With having no game last Saturday, Rovers have had the opportunity to get their work done on the training pitch in preparation for the run of fixtures in the lead-up to Christmas.
“We have to look at everything, are we getting up the pitch well? Are we creating chances? Are we defending well? Are we getting enough bodies in the box? All of that, set plays. Certainly, with Tuesday’s game we would be saying putting the ball in the back of the net, let’s concentrate and try to do that as a team. When the opportunities come let’s put them away and have a finish to add to all our good work.
“There was no problem with confidence the other night, but of course you need to get results. Nobody remembers how well we played when they see the result and we haven’t won, so you need to win games of football. The way we look at it is, if we are performing well and we think that we are doing enough to try and create chances we just need to be cooler and more clinical and take them.”
Northampton are the next opposition for Micky and his men and are a team who are always fighting at the right end of the League Two Table.
“It is a place where, for the last few seasons, we haven’t played well. We spoke to the lads, and we’ve said the reasons why we think that we didn’t, we need to try and fix that.
“We haven’t won there for 16 years I think, of course we’ve not played against each other every year, but it’s all there for us, the prize is there for us to go down there and fight for. We know what we have to do well in order to get a result, so we’ve been working on that as well. It’s always a really good place to go and play football, we just have to make sure that we do the things that we haven’t done previously to go down there and get a result.
“We know that our performance has to be good, if we can create the chances that we have been creating and take them then we’ll be fine.
“We always want to win; we always want to get results. We’ve drawn a few, so we’re not losing them. We lost in the FA Cup and a League game, and of course it’s really disappointing when that happens. If we can just take our chances and turn draws into wins, that is the next stage of development for this young team now. If we do that, then go down to Northampton and perform like we haven’t done for a long time, that’s the next stage for this group. If we take these steps then we’ll be fine.
“Anybody who watches us regularly knows how young and how inexperienced we are so we get that all the time. It’s just about helping the project that we set out on at the beginning of the season, they’re young and there is a big difference between the level of football that they’ve come from, the style of football that they’ve played in to what they’re facing now which is real Saturday, Tuesday men’s football.
“We’ve just got to keep moving forward with the process, keep trying to improve them. People will maybe lose patience with it sometimes, doing what I’m asked to do here which is keep moving them forward and keep improving them, to keep moving them forward to the group of players that I know they will definitely become.”
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