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Gaffer's Plymouth preview

Posted on: Fri 04 Dec 2009

Hopeful that the weather doesn't affect his team's chances of playing at Plymouth on Saturday, Kevin Blackwell looks ahead, glad that the injury crisis seems to be abating.

I have been banging on for some time about what we could do when the injured players are back, and that is starting to happen. Now we want consistency of selection that should help us with consistency of form - and better results.

We have had 18 debuts in a very short space of time, including four on the trot in the last four games, and the inevitable lack of understanding causes problems.

But last week in training before the Bristol game I looked at who was back on the pitch and we were looking better.

When we went out at Bristol we had power, pace and strength, and then Carl Ikeme gave us a presence at the back because of his size.

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This is no a criticism of the squad players who have been filling in over the last few weeks. Some of them, and me, were hurt by the criticism because they were doing a job for the team as best they could in the circumstances.


On Plymouth Argyle
We will respect every one of them in a green shirt, but I think the biggest danger is the potential backlash from that 1-4 'defeat' against Barnsley before the game was called off.

I hear that Paul Sturrock cancelled days off this week and will be looking for a response from his players. It is a similar situation to last week when Bristol City had just been hammered at West Brom, and against Peterborough the week before when a new manager had been installed.

We won those challenges and have a tidy record down there recently, but before the Barnsley blip Argyle had posted some decent results, including a win against Middlesbrough so we expect a tough challenge.

I was at Plymouth for three years so I know how the Home Park crowd can pressure an away team. We knew that the opposition had probably had spent hours and hours travelling and were probably a bit stiff which wasn't conducive to coming out and playing the sort of flowing football they might like.

We are taking every precaution to be properly prepared and are flying there and back to cut down on the travelling time.


On Lee Williamson
He isn't fully match-fit yet and is trying to get there with every game. When he is right he has great energy and can get forward from midfield to link up with Darius Henderson like he did when they were at Watford which is one of the reasons I bought him.

I remember in his Rotherham days that the fans at Millmoor liked to see him getting into the box to score. He is such an attack-minded player that he needs a strong defensive partner alongside him.

Kevin Blackwell
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