Cheltenham Town FC

Mark Yates interviewed ahead of York City at home:

We were disappointed to concede silly goals at Plymouth last week, but in the grand scheme of things we picked up six points from nine so we’ve not been too hard on them.



It’s been a good week, working on things ready to face York on Saturday. The lads have trained and responded well. They were disappointed, but things move quickly and we have to get on with it now.
We have talked about our game management being better and we’ll reiterate that, but overall it’s been good this season.
At Plymouth we kept almost getting back into it, but then shooting ourselves in the foot.
It didn’t happen for us on various fronts so we have to learn from it and be better against York.
Plymouth are a good side, who played the system really well. Their mobility caused us problems and we’d done a lot of travelling to Cambridge and then Plymouth.
We need to realise what Plymouth did better than us and work on it now moving forward.
There have been some hardworking displays at home this season so we are looking forward to getting back there.
Where York are in the table doesn’t mean it’ll be an easy game. They are not easy to beat, there are some friendly faces coming back and they’ll be up for it so we have to make sure we are as good as we can be to get a result.
We’ve seen a couple of their games since Russ Wilcox took over and it’ll take him time, but he’ll tinker with a few things.
How Russ got the sack at Scunthorpe is ridiculous after what he did last season. It’s mind blowing really, but I am glad he’s straight back into a job. I played with him and he’s a good character and winner, but we’ll be trying to put one over him on Saturday.
This club is known for stability and sticking with people and I don’t know the full circumstances with Russ, but I think he deserved a bit more loyalty. He has gone from best manager in League Two to suddenly after 10 games finding himself out of a job, having made a step up.
I spoke to him about a player recently and he said League One is a much tougher league, with more quality, but they were learning and improving. He didn’t deserve to lose his job in my opinion.
York have some good players and I am sure they won’t be where they are for long.
We have to be tighter defensively than we have been of late and get three points.
Apart from Matt Taylor and Asa Hall everyone is okay. Matt Richards had a slight knock, but he’ll be available.
I have a selection dilemma up front with John Marquis coming back, but that’s what I need.
His performance at Cambridge means he’s right back in the equation, but Eusebio is also champing at the bit to play.
We need to get back to being what we are about, having tinkered a bit. I thought Joe Hanks looked tired last week and it was Omari’s chance. We’ll change it as and when we feel necessary.
Russ Penn, Luke Summerfield and Keith Lowe will be given a warm welcome back and they all deserve it because they were all great servants to this club.
Luke only had one season here and it ended disappointingly, but he was a catalyst in that team we had alongside Russ and Marlon Pack.
Russ went on to captain the club and I’ve had him for five or six years of my managerial career. Keith was really good too and probably didn’t get the chance he might have deserved, which was maybe wrong on my part. Keith was in and out of the side too much for his liking, we had good offers for them both from York and they found themselves on their way.
Circumstances meant that if we wanted to re-jig things here we had to accept the offers and they both did brilliantly for York last season.
I am sure they’ll want nothing more than for Russ to set a goal up for Keith to score, but I won’t take that personally because I’d like to do the same.