Conor Coady has been speaking this week ahead of the Championship opener against relegated Premier League side Middlesbrough.
Having shown his versatility under new head coach Nuno Espirito Santo having been moved from right back to centre half this pre season, we host Boro on Saturday in the opening game of the season and Coady is hoping to keep his ever present pre season status going into the new campaign.
Coady has of course been involved in all of our games this summer under the new gaffer in one capacity or another.
Speaking to the Official Website the 24 year old explained.
‘We`ve been working very hard in pre-season. It’s had to be like that because the gaffer’s brought a whole new way of playing into the football club. We’ve listened to him. It’s been a bit up and down in pre-season, we’ve lost a couple of games, but it’s a learning curve. This is the first week of competition football. It’s one we wanted to put our stamp across.’
Coady went on to say.
‘It’s about passing and moving the ball, entertaining, getting the front three on the ball. We created a number of opportunities against a top club in the Premier League. I’m really enjoying it. I want to get better, as everybody does in this formation. This is the start of something. They’ve come in, they’ve bought into what the Championship’s about and they speak about it every day. We have meetings on how we need to play – it’s not all about keeping the ball, we need to be clever as well. Saturday is a huge game and one that everyone is looking forward to.’
Speaking about the confidence in the camp at this moment in time, he went on to explain.
‘We were saying before the Leicester game that there’s a lot of optimism around at the minute. All the players are very optimistic, we’re exactly the same as everyone in the stands. Going into next week it’s massive that we start well. All the boys are excited about it being a full house, we saw what it was like for the Chelsea game and how good they were that day. The gaffer’s mentioned it quite a lot in pre-season, how our home form hasn’t been good for a couple of years. To get this place rocking and bouncing will be a massive asset for us.’
With the club seeing plenty of change of late, Coady admits that there has been a mindset change amongst the playing group. We’ve deserved midtable Championship football, but now everyone wants to kick on from that.
‘We know what we have to do. It’s only the beginning. The players who’ve come in, there’s some really exciting talent there. Also there’s fire in the bellies of the boys who’ve been here for a number of years. We don’t want to carry on being a mid-table club. That’s what we’ve deserved – we’ve not been good enough. There’s a fire in the belly – they want to go on and do something special. The gaffer’s being calling the games training games for us to get better. It’s been relentless really. Double sessions out in Austria every day was really tough.’
