Daily Catch Up - Friday 22 March

"Every manager makes mistakes and tomorrow’s game with Plymouth is a reminder of one I made in leaving Argyle to join Leicester City in the autumn of 2007.

"I had a good squad at Home Park and genuinely believed when taking charge in the summer of 2006 that I could take the club into the Premier League.

"Soon, however, I became frustrated that the board’s ambition did not appear to match my own. When I wanted to almost double the salary of one of my best players to make sure we kept him, the directors wouldn’t go along with it.
"I was impatient for success as a manager and when Leicester showed interest in recruiting me in the autumn of 2007 I saw the opportunity to work with a budget that gave me a realistic chance of operating in the top tier of English football.

"What I didn’t realise was that the club had a lot of deep-seated problems at the time. I wasn’t even there a full season and left after we got relegated.

"In hindsight, I didn’t show enough respect to the Plymouth fans and should at least have stayed until the end of the 2007/08 season. If I had, we might have built something special.

"That’s life. on Saturday I will be rooting for Rovers to continue their improved form of late, which does great credit to Graham Coughlan and his coaching staff."

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We are looking forward to it but obviously are above them in the table by one position; we have done very well to catch them. We’ve gone past them and we want to keep ahead of Bristol Rovers because we’ve been on a very good run ourselves, especially at home, seven games unbeaten and want to continue that form.

“We have two of the biggest legends in Kevin Hodges and Paul Wotton in our staff. There are a number of players coming back from the opposition as well, it is always nice to go back to your own ground and meet them, but we are obviously looking after Argyle tomorrow.
“We have eight games to go and they are eight very big games, but we are hopeful we pick up the required points well before then.

“This league is very difficult to predict but both of us have shown very good form. We have got players who are in form and we have one of the top goal scorers in the division in Freddie Ladapo. We have Graham Carey and Ruben Lameiras both in good form and we know they have got a threat as well, we have got to be mindful of that.”

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