Manager looking forward to Spireites evening tie
Ahead of Chesterfield’s visit to St James Park, City manager Paul Tisdale feels that the squad are looking forward to something a little different – a Friday-night match at St James Park.
The fixture kicks off the weekend and frees up the Saturday afternoon for supporters to get braced for Christmas – and Tis is hopeful that it will have a positive impact on the crowd.
“It’s something different and there’s some novelty to it,” said Tis. “I know that traditionally it can be a problem to get fans in on the Saturday before Christmas, which is always a bit of a difficult slot. So hopefully the Friday night will encourage a few more people to come that would have otherwise gone shopping on Saturday.
“It’s an evening game and we enjoy playing under the lights at home, so hopefully we will get some supporters that ordinarily we wouldn’t have gotten on the Saturday.”
Chesterfield are currently suffering with depleted numbers, as a glut of their squad are out injured or on the mend. Armand Gnanduillet, Jimmy Ryan, Aaron Chapman and Nathan Smith are all certain to miss out, while Liam Cooper, Marc Richards, Sam Morsy, Gary Roberts and League 2 Player of the Month Ollie Banks are all in the balance as they recover from recent knocks and niggles.
But Paul isn’t going to be drawn into complacency because of a thinner squad, because of the depth of quality that Chesterfield have to select from.
“It can go both ways – they can gather some togetherness and galvanise themselves into an effective team, or it can be dispiriting,” he continued. “I’ve seen it go both ways.
“Even though they’ve got players out, they’ve still got some good players. They’ve been in the top quarter of the league all year so I’m not going to be dismissive of the players they have on the pitch, no matter who they pick.”
The City boss was given some food for thought at the Crown Ground last weekend as a Grecians side featuring five home-grown players earned a 3-2 win against Accrington – and he feels that trust plays a big factor in the selections.
“It’s easy to trust the players when they prove they are going to be good enough, and that’s the key really,” he continued. “During the last ten years at the club, there has been a real push to produce our own players and we needed to gain credibility at the younger age group to sign the players.
“We spend a lot of time working with our reserve team and our under-21s – we get a good feel for them and when they come into the first team, we’ve had them for six, seven, eight years. So when it comes to making decisions, it’s easier to trust them when you’ve seen what they can do.
“There has to be an element of trust because they’ve not proved it over a period of time yet. But we see them every day in training, and our mean average is on the up all the time.”