Tony Mowbray shared his thoughts on the opposition ahead of this afternoon's match against Norwich City...
POOR FORM
"I haven’t studied them to be honest. I think I started watching them this morning, they’ve got some good players. Their results, I think they’ve had one win in five. I don’t know until I watch them deeper really but I’m pretty sure they’ll have an identity, obviously they’ve got a different coach now."
NORWICH WANT TO BE HIGHER UP
"But the club, I know Norwich, they’ll have a philosophy of how they want to play and what they want to do. For me, I’m more interested in us. I think Norwich is one of the teams that will expect and I’m pretty sure will be up and around in the upper echelons when it comes to the crunch into the New Year and you get February and March when you have to win matches and you can propel yourself pretty quickly up the table."
JUST THE NEXT GAME
"This is just the next game for us, we’re more focused on us than on them and of course we have to know what their strengths and weaknesses are but we’re more focused on trying to reproduce good performances from us. We’ve done alright so far this season, I know we’re in a difficult spell with results but I still think the performance level of the team is ok and we just have to keep that going."
CAN’T BE TOO EMOTIONAL AFTER BAD RESULTS
"I don’t think I’ve ever been like that to be honest, I look at the team that we’re trying to put out on the pitch and I think ‘do we know what we’re trying to do, do we know how we’re trying to score a goal, do we know how we play, what’s the non-negotiables for our team?’ and I think the team is a really good team and I think we should be judged at the end of the season on how many points we accrue. That’s how I look at football, I want them to play well, I want them to enjoy it, I want them to be competitive but so does every other team."
REMAIN COMPETITIVE
"Whilst they might not be a bigger team with crowds and attendances and everything that goes with that as a big club, there are better financed clubs than this club, better salaries. I don’t know what the salary level of Leicester City is compared to Sunderland. There are bigger resourced football clubs and yet does that mean we have to be submissive to them, are we going to let them beat us because they’ve got more money or pay their players more or have bigger squads or better quality players? The job is to be ultra-competitive and I think we are in every game, win, lose or draw and that’s the challenge for us is to try and be competitive in this division. The teams with parachute payments, you know they have that £40 million before they kick a ball, it’s not easy for all the rest but we’ve been competitive and trying to put a decent team together for the supporters."
IN A GOOD POSITION
"I’ve talked about this, I want them to feel as if win, lose or draw they see a team that’s giving them everything and that’s all I ask the team. We get disappointed if we don’t win football matches but the journey carries on, the way we prepare the team, things we ask them to do. I’m pretty relaxed to where we are, I think we got three points less than what Burnley had last year at this stage of the season. So we shouldn't be too unhappy, we are three points off third in the league. Let’s keep going. I wouldn't question anybody, they can be high or they can be low. People know the reasons why teams win or lose, I’ve lived in that environment for 20 odd years now being a football coach. At the end of the day we’re just trying to prepare the team for the next game and we do break down most games that we play and have a look what was good what was bad. I think there’s been plenty good this season so far and of course things to work on but that’s football and we do that all the time."
