Manager Keith Hill looks ahead to this weekend’s League Two encounter against Barnet
Rochdale are back on the road this weekend with a trip to Barnet’s Underhill Stadium looking to make it back-to-back wins following last Saturday’s 1-0 win over Torquay United.
The victory over the Gulls marked Keith Hill’s first three points since his return to the club last month and he is happy with the progress seen during his four weeks in charge.
“I’m really pleased with the progress that the players have made on my behalf,” said Hill. “I said previously against Northampton that the result shouldn’t undermine what we’re trying to achieve. Within football it is very difficult to look beyond the results because the harsh reality is that it is a results driven business. I feel as though there has been a good development from a player situation and from a results situation as well.
"We’ve been beaten once in four and it was great to build the self-belief, confidence and have the collective effort to make sure the plan progresses and works, and it was backed up by a positive result – we won 1-0 and created numerous other opportunities. Now we’ve got to make sure that as well as keeping clean sheets we convert a higher percentage of the opportunities that we’re creating so we can make the game more comfortable.
"I feel as though it is a good opportunity for us to keep building. Again results are very important but they can also be the enemy of what we’re trying to achieve because there’s so much negativity that comes with a bad result. It might not necessarily be a bad performance but it is up to me to balance the two and make sure that the plan is going according to what we set out to do in the first place."
He continued: "I just look at the opposition, not where they are in the league. There will be a positives and negatives in the way that Barnet set the team up. They’re at home and they’ve had two good results recently against Port Vale and York last time out so we have got to be as competitive as we have been since I’ve been back at the club. We’ve got have the same sort of structure, have the same sort of application and I’m sure that we’ll give any team, whether they’re top, middle or bottom of the division, a real game.”
You can listen to the full eight minute interview with Hilly on Dale Player now by clicking HERE.