Neill Collins spoke to the media ahead of the Reds' clash with Leyton Orient in Sky Bet League this Saturday at Oakwell.
FITNESS UPDATES
[On Fabio Jalo] "It's certainly much better than we first expected. But he's another few weeks yet. Jamie McCart is in contention for Saturday and he's progressing very well. Would it be optimal to start Donovan? (Pines) Maybe not. His level of fitness and with how he's trained, if we needed to start him, we could. I'd ask people to bear in mind the expectations. He played yesterday in the U21s and did really well. It was his first game in four months. Obviously totally different to playing a League One game in the middle of the season. But Donovan's come in and acquitted himself really well. I'd be more than happy if we decided that Donovan was going to be part of the eleven."
JOSH EARL AND CONOR GRANT
"Conor played in the game yesterday as well which was good. Was good to get him sixty minutes, because he's played I think eleven or twelve games for MK Dons this year which is good, but maybe not so much recently.
"It was a fantastic performance from Josh (in 1-1 draw with Bolton Wanderers), all things considered. One day of training, going to play one of the top teams in the league, to do as well as he did, lot to be happy about. A lot to be positive about in the future if we could continue to build on that performance."
LEAGUE STANDINGS
"We've answered a few questions that you guys were asking at the start of the season, in terms of against the top teams I think we've shown that not just with the results, but the performances, that we can compete. But again, we need to get consistent results through a 46-game season. We look at the Exeter game and we're disappointed we dropped points, but then you look at last night in the league where teams are dropping points. The big thing for us now is just to get the points, whoever it is against, wherever they are. We've shown that we can win at home, win away. Beat top teams, beat lower teams, but now it's just about how consistently we can do that."
LEYTON ORIENT
"I was at the game (Port Vale vs Leyton Orient on Tuesday night). I didn't learn much more than I already knew, which is that they're a very good side in very good form. They're really consistent right now, they play some great football and create a lot of chances. So as you can see, across the league right now every game is a tough one. This one's going to be an exceptionally tough one on Saturday. If we follow up on our performance against Bolton here (at Oakwell), then I think it will be a good game."
