Boss looks ahead to Cambridge
The Town go into another League 2 game buoyed by another positive performance in a cup tie as they go in search of their first league win of the season.
Five matches without a win in League 2, however, has seen the Hatters slip to 22nd place in the early table.
And following a 2-1 win over Leyton Orient on Tuesday night, which saw manager John Still make seven changes to the side that lost 2-1 to Portsmouth, the boss now has plenty of decisions to make on who to field against Cambridge at the Abbey Stadium this weekend.
Whichever team the boss plumps for, somebody will be disappointed to be left out, but Still is happy to be in such a situation – even if he could be without Scott Cuthbert and Cameron McGeehan through injury and suspension respectively.
“Players are disappointed when they don’t play, of course they are,” the manager said at his Thursday press conference. “You can tell people the reason why, and they’ll sit down and understand your point of view, not necessarily agree with it, but will understand it.
“But this job about making decisions and sometimes they’re big decisions and important decisions. You make the decisions about people with the utmost respect for what they’ve done for this football club, for the person they are because you like them as people.
“It’s not always important to like them as people, they’ve got to be footballers first, but there are players you genuinely like and want to do well. But that can be no reason to play them, you’ve just got to pick what you think if right.
“I don’t have a responsibility to get 70 per cent of this squad fit, ready, organised and focused, I have a responsibility to 100 per cent of the players to do that and always have a responsibility to pick what I think is the best team to represent the football club.”
Saturday’s visit to the Abbey Stadium will be the Town’s fifth since January 2014, and it’s a fixture the boss is looking forward to – even though it carries no extra importance than any other League 2 fixture.
You can watch the boss’ thoughts on the game below, courtesy of our official YouTube channel. You can also watch 30 minutes of discussion with John exclusively on Hatters Player.