On behalf of everyone at the club and the boys in the changing room, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and hope you all had a great day yesterday with your families and loved ones.
You have been there for us all year and I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and for you all to stay as safe as you can. It would have been great to see you all at Hillsborough today but as the gaffer has said, the health of everyone has to be the first priority.
From a football perspective, it’s been a very frustrating period. Obviously we are on a very good run and for me personally, after a having a good game at Crewe and scoring, you just want to get back to training and playing games but with the way the world is at the minute, football has been disrupted again with postponements all over the place.
Of course it’s good to be at home and spending time with your family but you want to be out there doing your job, seeing your team mates in training and playing football. We just want to get back to it now and continue the good run and keep picking up points. The boys are coming back to training in phased groups, we keep testing regularly, we are doing the right things.
We all want to be playing football and the fans want to watch the games. I think if I were to be really honest, if some of the measures we’ve seen elsewhere come here with restrictions or even no fans again, it would be really frustrating because it is a different sport without supporters, especially when you play for this club.
We saw some of the results last season without fans, Liverpool conceding seven against Aston Villa and other strange results like that, it just wouldn’t happen when fans are there, I am convinced of that.
It is real but it doesn’t feel like real football when the fans are away. Football is not football without the fans. If we can all continue to test regularly, take all necessary precautions, have the COVID passports at games and follow all the regulations, then hopefully we can continue as normal. Fingers crossed we can get past this latest variant with fans watching in stadiums because it’s a massive part of football for me.
On the football, to begin the season, we had a lot of new players come in, it was always going to take time at the start but what we have done really well is hang in there despite all the injuries we have suffered. What you might see now with teams having really busy schedules and maybe teams at the top who haven’t had injuries yet, they may start having one or two themselves. We’ve had a lot of injuries, we’ve dealt with it and are coming through the other side.
In recent weeks we’ve played really well but we’ve still got players on the treatment table to come back. There is a gap to the top but that can go in the space of a week or so, Rotherham have been brilliant and their consistency has been second to none but we’ve already been to Rotherham and won so we know what we are capable of.
Teams coming to Hillsborough will not look forward to it with big, big players to come back from injury and us on a long unbeaten run, our tails are up, we have great professionals here and we will be ready for it all. It’s not been ideal this break but there are many players in the dressing room who have played a lot of minutes and they can use it to re-energise and come back strong again.
We miss these games as much as you, we all want the same thing, to be back out there on the pitch as soon as possible. Keep yourselves safe, enjoy the holiday period and we will see you all again soon.
BARRY