Steve Morison is hoping to improve Sutton’s home form, starting with the visit of Carlisle United this Saturday.
The Blues will provide a tough test, one that the Head Coach is well aware of, as the U’s look to get off the mark with their first win of the season.
“They’re a top team” he said. “They had a really good result at the weekend, got some good players, and it’s one that we’re going to have to stand up to, no pressure. From the players’ point of view, the way to focus on it is just obviously go and enjoy yourself.”
“Go and give everything you’ve got and test yourself against one of the better teams in the league. As I said, we do our due diligence on everyone like we do. We know what they’ve got, we know what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are and we need to try and put the best performance in we possibly can and hopefully we get a good outcome.”
“You just want to win all games, it’s not whether you’re at home or whether you’re away, it’s more if you just want to perform at home, you want to be your best version as you can at home. As I said, I thought the Solihull game was excellent, we just lacked that goal. The Scunthorpe game, I thought the end of the game, the second half, I thought apart from their two goals that we were excellent, especially when we were down to ten men.”
“It’s a place that we want to be better at, we weren’t good enough here last year, we want to be better and it’s something we’re working towards. I appreciate the fans coming in a bit earlier than they normally do last Saturday, and hopefully they can do that again this weekend.”
The clash with the Cumbrian outfit could see a second successive start for Mo Dabre, who finally made his long-awaited debut last time out against Rochdale, having shaken a hamstring injury picked up the Behind Closed Doors’ friendly against Cambridge United at the start of pre-season.
“He’s just one hell of a kid, one hell of a kid. And I said when he came in, he just runs around so much that he kind of got himself, he nicked his hamstring in the first game against Cambridge, so I was really disappointed for him as he’s worked hard and you’ve only got to come and watch him train to see that he gives everything every single day, and I was really pleased to give him his debut for us on Saturday. I thought that he handled the occasion, handled the situation, I thought he handled himself really, really well and we took him off at half-time just because it was his first minutes of pre-season in a game.”
“Obviously, regardless of the situation and how things looked at that moment, the right thing for the player is to take him off and to manage him and, yeah, he just brings bags of energy and quality and you know that he’s going to give you everything and that’s something you can’t you can’t coach, you can’t add to someone’s game whether they’ve got it or they haven’t and he gives it every single day and I’m really pleased that he’s back and he’s available for selection.”
The Head Coach also touched on Jack Taylor, who has been perhaps the most successful Academy graduate since Kylian Kouassi, who has gone on to play in the EFL for Blackpool and Salford City. Taylor scored his first professional goal for the U’s in the defeat to Scunthorpe United, and has established himself as one of Morison’s most important defenders.
“He’s a good player, he’s a really good player” Morison added. “He’s someone we had a plan for and when I first come in I was told that he was out on loan at I think it was Burgess Hill, someone like that. And he walked through the door, man-mountain, can play, can run. I was like, why are you not here? So we brought him in, sent him out on loan to Hornchurch quite quickly, which was to step up, and he did that excellently.”
“I thought last pre-season he struggled against some of the more physical teams, and I thought, do you know what? You need to go and have a loan regardless of whether we need you here or not. Go and have six months of just playing week in, week out and we appreciate what they did for him at Hamilton, Richmond. He’d come in with us on the other days and yeah, he shone there and obviously when he came back with us he started really positively and then just got that injury which you can put down to lots of things.”
“Maybe he’d played too many games but he was doing so well you just didn’t want to leave him out and Yeah, it was a difficult period for him and he’s worked really hard in the off-season and we’ve managed him over pre-season. He’s had some tough games already. We’ve only had a few, but he’s had some tough games. I thought he was excellent in pre-season and when he’s playing like he did on Saturday, he’s a match for anyone.”
“The reality is you just hope you can keep hold of him because a 20 year old playing as many games as he is, the way he looks, the way he carries himself, the way he plays, I wouldn’t be surprised at some point if He goes beyond us to the higher echelons of the EFL, which is a credit to himself, the family and all the hard work that all the staff have put into him and the football club. He’s a great talent and he’s one that I’m really pleased to have currently. We’ll just try and help him every day.”
