Jack Ross is happy that his midfield options will be boosted by the return of George Honeyman, Luke O’Nien and Lee Cattermole, for the trip to Valley Parade on Saturday: “Lee’s suspension is over, and George should come back into contention too. He will be fine in terms of the completion of his recovery from his concussion. Luke O’Nien is still ill, but he’s probably the other one that will be closest (for Saturday’s game). He came in this morning, but he wasn’t right, so we had to send him home. But hopefully he’ll have recovered enough to take part in training tomorrow. Apart from that, we’ll be as we were, obviously with the loss of Bryan.”
Ross was generally positive about the performance against Peterborough, although he felt we did enough to win the game. He said: “As a night, I think most people enjoyed it. It’s very rare as a manager that you ever fully enjoy games, but Tuesday night was one of those occasions when I really enjoyed it. I was obviously frustrated we didn’t win the game, but there were lot of good things I could take from our performance. It was a really good night, and the positives certainly outweighed the negatives. We’ll have another big away following down at Valley Parade, and with that, you always get a real intensity because of the circumstances. That will be the case at Bradford. They had a good result in the week, away from home, and they’re probably still getting used to the new manager. I feel like we’re getting better. Tuesday night was another sign of that, and it’s important we continue to improve as a team. The players are a in a good place, and they feel like they’re on the cusp of putting together a really good run of results.”
With Bryan Oviedo suspended and Denver Hume injured, Reece James is ready to make the most of his opportunity. Ross Explained: " Oviedo came to speak to me this morning, he was very apologetic. He was gutted about it, it is the first red card of his career. I said after the game that it was uncharacteristic. For me, it's a mistake, a poor choice. A mistake like passing it back to Jon, someone intercepting and scoring. It's a mistake. The game is played by human beings, it was disappointing, but he is genuinely gutted, I can see that in him. It's happened, there's zero Bryan or I can do about it now. He'll miss a few games and then it'll be up to him to get back into the team because it gives an opportunity to someone else now. It shows you how strange the game can be, it is an opportunity (for Reece James). Not just a one off, but potentially a run of games. The thing with Reece is that's done fine when he's had opportunities. I go back to Gillingham away, he was thrown in without game time and did really well on the night. For me as a manager, it stresses how important it is to keep communicating with players when they're not in the team. Reece and I still speak, his attitude has been good and he has trained really well. You never know when you'll need players so I think the good thing is I'm not all of a sudden going on like his best pal when I haven't spoken to him for weeks. He's a good player, he's won promotions with Wigan. I've got no worries about him at all, I just hope he takes the opportunity and then it's up to someone else to get him out of the team. We're fortunate that all of the left-backs, if you replace one with another the style doesn't really change. They're all similar, I suppose that could be a criticism and you could say you should have more variety, but it should help us in terms of the style of play."
