Niall Canavan believes the Iron are a strong enough squad to come through their tough recent run of results.
The opening games have seen the Claret and Blue without a win and we travel to Somerset on Saturday to face Gary Johnson’s Yeovil, who won their first match of the season on Tuesday evening, away at Walsall.“It’s always a tough game when you go down there, it’s a long journey and it’s all about how you prepare, deal with the journey and then take it into the game,” Canavan told The Iron Player.
“We’ve got to bounce back quite quickly and try get points on the board.
“We will look to impose ourselves on the opposition and I’m sure we’ll show respect to whatever formation and tactics they play but it’s down to us to force the game upon them.”
“It’s been a tough start,” he continued.
“It’s clear to everyone we haven’t clicked just yet, but we just have to keep trying to improve, working hard on the training ground to try rectify things which have gone wrong. Saturday’s our next chance to put things right and hopefully we take it.
“Sometimes, if you work hard enough, you make your own bit of luck and we’ve got to stick together as a group and try to improve collectively as well as individually and hopefully it will get us where we need to be.”
The Iron returned to the training ground after the Cod Army match on Thursday, before departing for Huish Park on Friday and Canavan says it’s been a tough day of preparation for the clash against a side relegated from the Sky Bet Championship in May.
He stated: “We’ve been working on first contact in and around both boxes- that’s been a disappointment so far because virtually every chance the opposition have had around our area has gone in.
“It was one of our strongest assets last year and we’ve been working on dealing with that ahead of what will be a tough game. We’ve worked hard and hopefully we can reap the benefits.”
Pre-season saw United beat Huddersfield Town at Glanford Park before pulling off a shock win against Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park in the Capital One Cup and Canavan says the team are not fazed by the background of their opponents.
He said: “We shouldn’t fear anyone in this league. There’s some big clubs with big budgets and history behind them but we have the quality behind us, like we showed at Blackburn, we can be a good unit.”
The Iron conceded two goals in quick succession in the season opener at Swindon and against Fleetwood. The opening goal against Preston put the game out of their reach and the 23-year-old academy product says they have to be focussed from the first whistle to the last.
“At the moment we seem to be relying on the first goal and if we can get that, we can kick on from there," he stated.
“It’s proven the team which scores first very rarely goes on to lose the game and its a known statistic throughout football, not just solely our team.
“Last season we did that a lot of the time and had very few losses when that happened so it’s a massive part. It means the other team have to come out and open up and it sometimes leaves the holes for you to pick and capitalize on.”
See much more from Niall Canavan, Paddy Madden, Russ Wilcox, Matt Sparrow and Luke O’Neill on the Iron Player.