On the topic of 'did Martin change things and compromise?' he was actually asked about this as the final question of the embargoed section of the press conference before the Sheffield Wednesday game.
It doesn't usually go out on social media etc, so people may have missed it - but I thought this was really interesting from Martin and definitely an admission that he has made some tweaks. Personally, I don't think it's been large changes but I do think he rolled his ideas back a bit.
Slightly long answer but have typed it up, so hopefully interesting...
Back in September, after you lost to Middlesbrough, you said the players were working extremely hard but that the mentality needed to change. I'm just wondering how you changed that mentality?
RM: It was our job to make sure the mentality changed. Not the players. It was ours, as a coaching staff. I think I was really responsible for us losing those four games in a row. It's always on the manager. We just had to try and compete more in and around training rather than [focusing on] tactics. I think we had to 'feel' a bit more, rather than think. We were thinking too much: myself and the players. I was giving them way too much to think about really.
It's such a fine balance because a player does require a lot of information and it's different to the information that they'd had over a period of time before. So then you need to try and prioritise things. So yeah, I think we just cleared the decks a little bit and we competed a lot in training and prioritised a few bits that were really about feeling the game rather than thinking. As it's gone along, they are definitely feeling way more than they are thinking now.
As a football player, or any sportsperson, it's really important to play with instinct. I think they're playing with their flow now, they're running for each other and they play with unbelievable courage against any opposition. However the opposition sets up, they're so brave. Seeing that from the lads is the best bit for me. We had to become braver and ourselves included as staff, we had chats on the pitches in the morning at training, you have to have a conviction in something. Then it was just about passing that on to the players. I think we have done that and as time has gone on, they've now got more evidence and feeling about what they're doing and pride in what they're doing.
That then becomes a self-sustaining thing between them as our players. We're really honest with them as a group of staff and they're really honest with us. We talk about things all the time and we come to a conclusion together and hopefully work things out together. But like I said, I tell them all the time how grateful I am for what they're doing on the pitch and now hopefully they can keep going with that and keep building their trust in each other.
It takes a huge amount of trust in each other to play the way I want them to play - it's ridiculous.
So I hope we never lose sight of that and I don't believe they will. Even in the last couple of games when we've had some big learnings, we've seen that you can never drop off. You need to live there all the time if you're going to be the team that we want to be.
