Sturrock focuses on Swindon: 'One or two selection dilemmas to mull over'

27 January 2012 10:52
Swindon Southend United manager Paul Sturrock in his weekly Echo column is concerned who should be his front two in Tuesday evening's vital clash with Swindon Town

I think it’s important to peak at the right times in football and that’s Saturdays and Tuesday so we have arranged a friendly for tomorrow morning. It’s a behind closed doors game and I don’t want to say who we’re playing against but the whole first team squad will be travelling.

Those who don’t play will be training on a pitch next to where the game is taking place and it will be an important part of our preparation for the game against Swindon.

It goes without saying that it’s going to be an important match but there are still only three points to play for and we still have another 20 games to go.

Therefore, Tuesday’s game won’t be decisive but it goes without saying we want to win it, especially as Swindon have beaten us twice already this season.

I’m also fully aware that our results against our promotion rivals haven’t been the best this season and that’s something else we would like to improve.

I have one or two selection dilemmas to mull over, especially in attack.

We have Jack Sampson, Neil Harris and Blair Sturrock all pushing for places and it’s important to come up with the right combination.

What happens in the friendly will help me make up my mind but I’d like to stress that it’s far too early for people to be judging Elliot Benyon.

He hadn’t played for a little before coming in to join us and he put some weight on in that time.

He now needs to work hard to lose that but it’s been encouraging that he’s been getting in positions to score.

He came close against both Northampton and Shrewsbury and once he gets that yard back he’s missing at the moment because of his fitness I’m confident he will do well for us.

Jack has impressed too though and it was unfortunate injuries stopped him coming on against Shrewsbury last weekend.

Both Mark Phillips and Jean-Paul Kalala had to come off and although they’re improving it’s happening slowly and it’s going to be very tight for both of them for Tuesday.

Hopefully we can have them available because they’re both important players but we will go with whatever we have available and look to bounce back from losing at Shrewsbury.

We were all disappointed by that defeat but I think Shrewsbury are very much involved in promotion and so are Swindon.

I think it’s a five horse race now and one of the team may drop out along the way.

It’s going to go down right to the wire but two points per game has always been enough to go up and I don’t see that changing this year.

That’s what our target has been all along and we’re right on that at the moment but now need to keep it going.

There are bound to be some ups and downs along the way but we’re happy with where we are at the moment and want to make sure we stay in the top three.

Source: FOOTYMAD