Reds Head Coach Paul Heckingbottom spoke to the press this morning ahead of tomorrow’s EFL Round One Cup Tie against League One side Northampton Town.
Heckingbottom started by giving team news and an update on Sam Winnall who came off in the first few minutes of the Championship season opener.
On Winnall, Hecky said, “He’s having a scan today, we’ve sent him straight for an MRI scan so we’ll obviously know more after that. I think we’re looking at a couple of weeks minimum.
“We could keep everybody injury free, but we wouldn’t be making them better. We could be safe and wrap them in cotton wool but we have to try and improve them by getting them as close to the red line as we can, then dip them down and get them back up again. We will be pushing them.”
On the rest of the squad, Heckingbottom continued by joking “Josh Scowen is fine, he’s a bit uglier and has one less thing not to smile about! He came through it fine. I felt we managed that part of the game really well when we were down to 10 men, we didn’t take risks, we slowed it down and did really well.
“James Bree had missed a week’s training and only just come back on the Thursday so we had to take that into account. The injury was at the wrong time for him because he was playing really well.”
After seeing his side defeated on the opening day, the Reds Head Coach wants get a message out to his players instantly.
He stated, “The message after the game to the players was that we’re not going to be one of those teams that walk off and everyone says you’ve played really well but you’ve lost, we just can’t be that. They don’t want to be that, I don’t want to be that and the Club doesn’t. We want to win games. We focused straight away on why we lost that game, three set-pieces and slow to recover on the other one. We will make sure they are all put right.
“If you flip it over, we caused problems in open play and from set-plays, I think the players can take a lot of belief from that. We’re here to stay, and if they keep performing like that and we make sure that we really tidy them up and get the detail right, they’ll start winning games.”
Moving on to tomorrow night’s EFL Cup clash against newly-promoted Northampton, Heckingbottom explained that it will be a hard game for the Reds.
On The Cobblers, he said “An opening day draw and a few good signings, they’ll be tough. Any team going up will be tough, I spoke to Ipswich after and that’s what they said about us because they knew we’d be carrying momentum.
“Northampton are bringing their qualities from last season up a league, we know it’s going to be tough and they’ll see us as a scalp as well now, it’s nothing to lose for them. It’s a game that will be tough but it’s a great game for us to go on and improve from Saturday’s performance, adding to the good bits and stopping the sloppy bits.”
Watch the full press conference over on Barnsley Player HD.
