Steve Cotterill spoke to the media ahead of tomorrow’s game at Charlton Athletic.
Salop are training at Montgomery Waters Meadow until the end of the season due to work on the pitch at the training ground.
We are also approaching the time of year when academy scholars are offered professional deals – which Cotterill provided an update on.
He also discussed tomorrow’s game and spoke about Elliott Bennett’s recent ankle scan.
On the game:
“It's the last time on the coach this season; it’s been a long season with lots of travelling and especially over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of travelling and we seem to have had that a lot this season. When you get a couple of cup games that are long journeys away from home, I think it rolls into the league but yeah, we’re going to a really good place and a very good football club. Historically, Charlton has done fantastically over the years and I remember when Alan Curbishley was in charge, I think I voted for him as my Manager of the Year for four or five years because I thought he was doing a brilliant job at a great football club.”
On the training ground:
“There are lots of things that have been going on at the training ground for probably around 12 months now. The training ground is on phase two of the upgrade and you won’t necessarily see too much difference in a couple of months, but the pitches we’re playing on have been better down the bottom half of the ground. Now we’re working on the main pitch but there’s a lot more drainage to be done so we don’t have those bad days where we get torrential rain and we can’t train, so there are lots of good things that are going on down there. We won’t be back there this season, we’ll be training on the pitch for now.”
On academy players getting professional deals:
“I think the process is nearly done. Dave [David Longwell] will be the one who drives that, he’ll ask my opinions on a few things and I trust Dave with that because he’s worked with youth team players throughout his whole career; that’s more his speciality. We have quite a few of the young players up training with us because I always think young players in the group are always fresh and enthusiastic, they keep the tempo of the session high and they always run. They don’t always run in the right places, but the one thing they do do is run, so the session flows very well when they’re up with us. I think there are a couple of decisions that need to be made or have been made in the last 24 hours but I don’t know when the club will put that out but it will be out very soon I imagine.”
On Elliott Bennett:
“It’s good news regarding his scan. We don’t quite know where he’ll be for tomorrow but there could be a possibility that he could be back before the end of the season so we’re really pleased about that. Hopefully, he’ll be okay for next week but I’m not sure about this weekend.”
