Alan Smith looks ahead to the Sky Bet League 1 game away to his former club MK Dons...
Notts County Player-Coach Alan Smith is confident that if the players can maintain the togetherness that served them so well earlier in the season, they will be able to turn their fortunes around during the run-in to the end of the campaign.
Smith, who joined the club from this weekend’s opponents MK Dons in the summer, knows that disappointment has crept in around the club of late, but feels that the dressing room atmosphere is one of determination rather than dejection going into the Sky Bet League 1 game at stadiummk on Saturday.
“Obviously everyone in the dressing room and around the club’s disappointed with the run that we’ve been on, but I think as much disappointment and frustration that everyone’s got, everyone wants to put that right,” Smith told the media on Thursday.
“On the back of a good point against Bradford, everyone was looking forward so much to Tuesday and we’re so disappointed, but in football you’ve got to get that out of your mind.
“You can’t dwell on the past and we’ve got 10 big games coming up for the rest of the season and that’s what we’ve got to focus on,” he added.
“I think a lot of people try and evaluate a game and blame this that and the other, but we’ve always been a team, since the first day I walked in, there’s no outstanding individual in this team, there’s no one person who thinks they’re better than anyone else and I think that is the message that we need to start relaying from now on until the end of the season and moving on.
“We can only win collectively as a team and we lose collectively as a team as well and, as I say, there’s no finger pointing, there’s no blaming and that’ll never ever be the case inside the dressing room and I think as long we’ve got that strong togetherness, which we’ve shown throughout this season at different times, then we’ll be fine.”
Looking specifically at this weekend’s game, Smith knows that it will be tough task to get anything against high-flying MK Dons, but is confident that if Notts stick to their gameplan there is no reason why they can’t get a result on Saturday.
“We’re always confident, there’d be no point going if we weren’t,” he continued. “People think that it’s a long shot that we’ll go there and win, but as we said before, teams have gone there with a game plan and made it very difficult for them.
“I’ve been there myself and they’re a team that, on their day, can be unplayable and you’ve got to try and upset them in the right way to make sure that’s not the case and that’s what we’ll be looking to do.”
Subscribers can watch the full pre-match interview with Alan Smith on Magpie Player.