Salford City manager Neil Wood gave his thoughts on the upcoming battle with Tranmere Rovers on Saturday in a press conference today.
The Ammies boss highlighted the desire for improvement from his own team ahead of a match he predicted to be a “tough game.”
He said: “we’ve just got to get back to our identity and our principles of how we play and how we train. It’s not that we need to rip up exactly what we’ve been doing because what we’ve been doing on the training pitch has proven successful up until this point it just needs more work.
“I always think when things aren’t looking right or not going as you want them to go then the best way to do that is to work through it and improve things all around.”
Tranmere come into the contest after their first win of the season, beating Harrogate 3-0 in a convincing midweek win.
The Salford manager said: “We know it’s going to be a tough game, they’re a good team, they posed us a lot of problems last season, so it’s not something that we will take lightly.
A trip to Merseyside awaits us this weekend ⏳ pic.twitter.com/tS0pdlROQH
— Salford City FC (@SalfordCityFC) August 16, 2023
“We know from Tuesday night’s game that’s not us, that’s not how we play and we know exactly where we’re going wrong with that so we can really pinpoint those areas and improve in those areas and get them better for Tranmere.”
Salford were undone by an Abo Eisa brace away at Grimsby on Tuesday in a tough game that saw new signing Ossama Ashley sent off in the 49th minute.
Neil Wood said: “Ash got two yellow cards that really could have been avoidable, but it led on from our mistake that put him in that situation, but he’s young and he’ll learn from it and he’ll come back from it and we’ll support him and show him where he can improve from the situation.”
The loss to Grimsby means Salford have won, drawn and lost one match each, and are sat in 12th place in the league.
This prompted the Salford City manager to highlight the volatile unpredictability of recent League Two campaigns.
He said: “Even if you look at the league last season, I think at any point any team anywhere in the league could beat anyone and the same again this season.
“There’s a lot of hype and there are a lot of things wrote about teams. I think sometimes if you start listening to predictions and all these different things, it’s not always a true reflection of what’s going on.”
The Salford boss also expressed a desire to “add some quality to what we’ve got” while the transfer window remains open.
He said: “We’re always looking to improve and bring quality, but it needs to be able to complement what we already have here and fit into how we want to play so hopefully we can get a couple of bodies in that can just give us some strength in depth in the squad.”
The Ammies will be looking to break their duck away to Tranmere Rovers at Prenton Park in a fixture that has never seen Salford triumph in the league after six attempts, (four losses, two draws).
Neil Wood reflected on last year’s manic losses that saw Salford dominate a lot of both games, being thwarted by the frame of the goal and spectacular last-ditch Tranmere defending.
He said: “If you look at the games last year we absolutely battered them at home and they defended for 90 minutes and then beat us one nil on the on the counter attack, so that was disappointing.
“Sometimes there’s a bit of a sliding doors moment when it doesn’t quite fall for you.”
Despite this the Salford City manager maintained the onus of his side to make the three points happen.
He said: “A result can be taken away from you from a corner or free kick or whatever it might be, or a simple mistake. We’ve got to rectify those mistakes, we’ve got to be better, we’ve got to control games better and that’s going to give us a better chance of getting results of putting wins together if we’re doing all the right things.
Salford City face Tranmere Rovers away at Prenton Park on Saturday 19 August at 3pm.
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