Caretaker manager Richie Wellens is missing players for Athletic’s trip to Portsmouth on Saturday. One important absentee is Eoin Doyle who is is injured. The youngster, who has been hitting the target, will be sadly missed.
Wellens said, “Doyle is out injured so he won’t play and that’s a blow. It is lucky that I’ve got Holloway back so that will be a straight swap. I will see what their back line is like and I will see what formation they play and make decisions from that. I’m just gutted that Doyle’s not fit because his energy and finishing is outstanding. He felt something in the last five minutes of the game, and I had already made three substitutions but I couldn’t pull him off. He has not done much the last few weeks and come here and played a lot of games in a short space of time so it just shows it is difficult to get back to the right levels. What I don’t want to do is force him to play and he be out for six weeks.”
“I’m going to watch two or three games today. I’ll watch the Bristol Rovers game from Tuesday night but then I will watch another one. In this league, if I watch one game, I might watch them when they were absolutely outstanding but you don’t see the weaknesses. If I was to watch one game where they were poor, I won’t see their strengths so I think it is important to watch two or three games. It’s hard and long because you’re having to watch games of football, it’s not live, there is no commentary, it’s pretty boring to be honest, but it’s important to watch a couple of games to see different sides of it. I’m not scared of changing the team, just because we played well.”
“Managers go into management and forget that they were players once. I enjoyed getting the ball, making good passes, playing one-twos, exciting the fans and when I lost it, I would react. That’s all I asked from the players and I thought they did it well.”