We want to stick together as long as possible
WHY ROSENIOR WANTS TO EXTEND SEASON
The realisation that this could be the last pre-match build-up of the season dawned on Liam Rosenior as he prepared his players on Thursday for their must-win final day trip to Plymouth Argyle. City’s regular season will come to an end at Home Park and for Rosenior, it could mark the end of a chapter with a squad he’s grown to love throughout the course of the ninemonth campaign.
Victory for the Tigers gives them a fighting chance of finishing in the top six, but Rosenior needs a favour from Preston at
West Brom.
If the play-offs prove a step too far, City’s season will end and the flight back to Humberside Airport after the game will be one filled with disappointment and a fairly significant chunk of regret of what might have been. It will also signal the end of the class of 2023-24. Liam Delap, Fabio
Carvalho, Noah Ohio, Tyler Morton and others will return to their parent clubs, and while City may want to do business, nothing at this stage is assured.
The summer break will signal another big turnover of players and Rosenior will have to start his process again with a new batch of recruits. Speculation will be rife around Jacob Greaves and Jaden Philogene, what will happen to other members of the squad, who will come in? So many questions and at this stage, no answers.
That’s why Rosenior is desperate to see his squad remain together for at least two more games, and possibly a third if they can get through a play-off semi-final and visit Wembley.
“Same as the other 45, you need a consistent process. You need to believe in and trust in the way that you work and then you hope that all of those things that add up, add up to a really positive performance first and a result afterwards,” Rosenior told the Mail as he previewed the Plymouth trek.
“That’s the beauty of life, it’s not just football. You never know what’s around the corner. If you’d have said to me 18 months ago that I was going to end up being manager of this club, I wouldn’t have believed you, and here I am.
“Now we’re on the verge of still with the possibility of doing something special in my first full year here as a manager, that’s a great accomplishment from everyone. For the work Acun and Tan have done to transform the club, I hope I have played my small part in that as well.”
Recounting his own experience of missing out on the play-offs on the final day,
Rosenior says time has and will always be against everybody, and hopes his players again grasp their chance.
“The players, they are just a joy to work with. It’s hard isn’t it because you don’t know if it’s going to be your last Thursday. We work certain days, Thursday was always a certain day in training, Friday is a certain day, and I was looking out today and I was just praying ‘Please don’t be our last Thursday’ because I enjoy the company of this group so much. That has to be the motivation for us, is to stick together for as long as possible and play every game like it’s not going to be our last and we have to do that on Saturday.
“The lads will tell you that from July, when we came back in for pre-season, I said, there’s the only thing that’s your enemy – it’s time. You don’t realise it until you get older and wiser and more experienced as I’m getting now. It’s been nine months, I think I’ve aged nine years in that nine months; when you speak to 20-year-olds or 21-yearolds or 22-year-olds, I remember it wasn’t that long ago when I was that age.
“You don’t realise the importance of time and maximising moments, and all of my regrets in my career came from me not recognising time and not taking things in and maybe not doing that extra one per cent that can get you to where you want to be. I’ve missed out on promotion by a goal. One goal. I was at Brighton, we missed out when we played Middlesbrough in the last game of the season, we missed out on goal difference by one goal.
“You’ve got to educate your players in a way that they learn, but the only way you learn in life is to do. It was amazing to hear Jacob Greaves speak after he won his award, he said something really, really interesting to me as his coach, he said, ‘now I understand.’ Now I understand how important it is for every moment and every detail and what we do and how important your points total is at the end. The only way that he can learn that as a 22, 23-year-old old is to live it, is to live the pain of losing a game, conceding from a set play or switching off from a throw.
“I’m not talking about Greavesy, I’m talking about a whole team. You have to learn from your experiences, you have to learn from the mistakes that you’ve made, and I have to say, since we came back from the bonding trip to Antalya, the performances that the players have consistently put in, have gone to another level.”
“I’m so proud of it. I’m so proud of the work that we’ve done because it is a process and you have to have those learning experiences for you to improve and get better.
“The consistency now of the group, and not just in terms of how we possess the ball or how we create and score goals, the spirit and camaraderie and togetherness that we’ve wanted to create is there.
“I just want to see us go and show that again on Saturday and what will be will be from there.”