As it happens, Breadford have not won in the league themselves since beating Northampton, when everybody was, back on October 22nd! However, he still has time to praise the work of Blues boss Paul Sturrock whose job loooked to be mission impossible when he last saw the Shrimpers, in a pre-season friendly during the summer of diconsent in 2010.
Parkinson told www.yorkshirepost.co.uk: “Southend have done well and are up there. You would fancy them to stay the course. They have had a slight dip of late, but look at the team and you can see they are not bad. I saw them at the start of last season, playing a pre-season game against Dartford and Paul Sturrock basically didn’t have any players. He could just about get 11 out on the pitch. It took that club a while to get going but they have certainly done that this season. It shows what can be done.”
And on the game tonight, the ex-head farmer said: “It is another challenge for us. But we went down to Gillingham last time and put in a good display. A similar style of performance will give us a chance.” (They drew 0-0 at Priestfield only a couple of weeks ago, a warning certainly.)
Parkinson continued on the theme chatting to BBC Radio Leeds: "They [Southend] have had a good season so far, they're strong and Paul Sturrock has done a good job there. Paul's teams always play in a similar vein and we know what to expect, but we've got a few options and it's up to us to pick the team which we feel can get a result. If you sit back for 90 minutes you're going to get punished sooner or later, so you've got to go into a game confident you can deal with their attacking strengths, but equally with the players we've got going forward, confident that we can give them problems."
Finding the back of the old onion bag does seem a problem and in just 5 draws from ten games on the road they have scored just 21 goals in 20 games and none at all in their last four away from Valley Parade. A striker is definitly Parky's top priority in the new year after a deal for Paul Benson collapsed, a player that might now be on the Shrimpers radar though three thirty something's in the squad up front might be a bit too much.
Yet, the former Charlton boss knows a good team relies on goals throughout the team.
Speaking to www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk he said:“We’ve got to make the keeper work more and that’s everybody’s responsibility. You’ve got to be careful when we’re talking about chances and (lack of) goals. You look around the team and it’s not just the strikers who’ve got to score. Centre halves have to chip in with goals as well. Midfield players have got to work harder to hit the target when they get in the box. Look back at Saturday and if one of those chances had gone in earlier in the game, it could have been a different story. We had really good chances at the end but didn’t show that composure.
We’ve had a few goals from set-pieces this season but that should have been more with the good headers of the ball that we’ve got. We’re a big side and the set-piece delivery the other day wasn’t bad in the main. Sometimes it’s not that first header but the second one and we’ve got to be alive to it.” As we should be as well, good luck to Luke Prosser tonight if he steps up to the plate.
Source: FOOTYMAD
