Source: FOOTYMAD
Rovers assistant on yesterdays defeat at Hull
Doncaster Rovers have welcomed the news that Birmingham City have agreed to let teenage midfielder Jordon Mutch stay on at the club for another month. "We are delighted with Birmingham's decision," said assistant manager Richard O'Kelly. "He's a cracking lad with a good personality and a good character."As I have said before he's got the makings of a good footballer as well as a good person and the more you get good people around you the better it is."O'Kelly was rather less pleased with the club's overall performance in yesterday's practice game at Hull City, which they lost 5-0."It wasn't the best we've played in practice games and it wasn't a performance to get your pulse racing," he said."They all gave it a go as normal, and we had little spells where there was good spells of pressure and some good spells of defending. "But even allowing for the fact that Hull were quite strong, as a team performance let's say that we've done a lot better."But, as always, the main reason for these games is to get people out there on the pitch and get 90 minutes, or whatever, under their belts. So from that point of view it was a successful exercise."We've got a lot of games coming up this month and some of the players involved against Hull could be called upon to play, so it was important that they got a run-out."Players can get their fitness levels up with the right sort of training and I think that we are a lot better at doing that than we used to be since Ross (Burbeary) has come to the club."He's devised various fitness tests that get players up to a certain level and players are fitter than ever when they come back into the first team."But I still think that it's better that players currently not playing regularly in the first-team can get out onto the pitch and play for 90 minutes, 11 against 11."It helps them make decisions during a game and that is what you want them to be doing."Midfielder Martin Woods, who joined in Monday's training session, again trained yesterday without any adverse reaction and he's set to train with the rest of the squad on Thursday.
