Working hard to regain my place

Latics’ goalkeeper writes every week for Chron Sport

IT IS only natural as a player to be frustrated when you are dropped from the team.

That is the feeling I experienced last week.

Having not been in the side for the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy against Preston, I was on the bench at Rochdale as Paddy Kenny came in to make his debut.

The disappointment on a personal level remains, but I will be working as hard as I can to try to win my place back.

The most important thing for the team and the club was winning at Rochdale on Saturday — and after doing so 3-0, keeping a clean sheet, personal disappointment took a back seat. The atmosphere was fantastic and the travelling army of supporters made a big difference.

On the day we didn’t pass the ball as well as we normally do. But we had planned to be solid and that is exactly what we were.

Daniel Johnson showed his quality with his finishing. He and the other scorer on the day, Jonathan Forte, bring us skills honed at a higher level.

They will need to be at their best, just as we will as a team against Doncaster tomorrow. I believe they will be a lot stronger than the last time we played them. It is a different team now, with added options in the side they didn’t have back in August.

Paul Dickov returns to SportsDirect.com Park tomorrow and next week our manager’s father Gary Johnson is here with Yeovil. It all makes for interesting stories in the media, but we will let that side of things take care of itself.

I don’t think the manager will let anything distract us from our task. A lot of attention to detail goes into everything we do.