After being sent off in the Iron’s League One opener at the start of August, Luke Daniels has found game time hard to come by.
But United manager Mark Robins gave him his chance to impress on Tuesday night when the team faced Barnsley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy first round and, as Daniels tells The Iron PlayerHD, it was nice to get back playing.“I’ve been itching to get back in," he said. "I put myself in a position where I’ve not been available for selection and the gaffer has stuck with Joe (Anyon), so it was nice to get back out there.”
To excuse the pun, Daniels grabbed the game by both hands on Tuesday, and put in a highly commendable performance - with more than one save keeping United in the game at that particular time.
Daniels wasn’t focussed on his personal performance on the day, and was disappointed to go out of the cup.
“The most important thing would have been to get through," he said. "But it was nice to go out and make a few saves. It’s been a tough period, but it was self-inflicted so I can’t complain.
“Joe has done well so the gaffer has stuck with him, I can only hope that with me playing well on Tuesday night that it has given him a decision to make.”
Next up in League One is Blackpool, who travel to Glanford Park on Saturday. The Seasiders have been struggling to get to grips with life back in League One after their relegation from the Championship in May – but Daniels says there are no easy games in this league.
“It’s going to be a tough game," he said. "There’s no easy game in this division, so just because a team is down at the bottom, or not doing well, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy for anyone.
“It’s a game we believe we can win, we’re definitely good enough to win – so we just have to go out and show that.
“We are quite a new group, there’s a lot of new players coming in. It takes competitive games for us to gel together and get to where we are in a rhythm, so it will come.
“Every game is important, there are no games where you can write it off. We know that we are going to have to step it up, and we know that although there have been a lot of good things – it’s not been good enough for where we want to get to.
“More than anything it’s about what we do, and we can’t look at teams who haven’t won since the start of the year, we just have to make sure that when they turn up here on Saturday we put our best performance out there and get a positive result."
See much more from Luke Daniels, Mark Robins and Jordan Clarke on The Iron PlayerHD.
Tweets by @SUFCOfficial