COOPER: WE MUSTN’T BE OVERAWED!
MARK COOPER will send his players, and particularly son Charlie Cooper, out at Wembley today with a little reminder.
“I never ever got near it as a player,” the Forest Green Rovers boss and former Exeter, Birmingham and Tamworth midfielder, tells The NLP.
“That’s what I said to my son. ‘You’re 19 and you’re getting to play at Wembley! You can’t thank me enough, you’re so lucky’. If I pick him!
“The biggest thing is keeping the players in a good place so they can focus on their game. We’ve got some young boys who haven’t been to Wembley. Some have, some haven’t and we’ve got to make sure they’re not overawed.
“It’s great for them. I don’t think they will have any fear. I just want them to express themselves and give it a good go. That’s all you can ask.
“The tactical bits we’ll give them to focus on, you have a framework to play off and then it’s up to them.”
As a man- ager, he has had the ups and downs at English football’s HQ. A late extra-time winner for Chris Senior saw Darlington win the FA Trophy in 2010 and led to Cooper celebrating with a mad dash to the corner reminiscent of David Pleat. He felt the pain of losing a League One play-off final with Swindon, although extenuating circumstances of outside interference from above hit their preparation in the build-up and perhaps contributed to a mauling by Preston North End. Last year he was in the dug-out in an advisory role as Forest Green, fresh from sacking boss Ady Pennock in the last week of the season, were beaten by Grimsby Town. But this is a vastly different team, now moulded in Cooper’s style. “Last year they’d lost some key players to injury in the build-up,” Cooper says. “They weren’t prepared. This year we’ve got everyone fit, we’ve got that bit of depth and that gives us an opportunity to have a good bench and a good XI.” It’s not been all plain sailing this season. They started brilliantly, topping the table and going unbeaten for more than two months between September and the middle of November. At home to then second place Lincoln, they were minutes away from stretching their lead at the summit to 12 points, only for a late Imps turnaround to cut it to six. Cooper wasn’t happy with the balance of his side and set about undertaking major surgery to the squad, dipping down the Pyramid for additions like Shamir Mullings from Chelmsford City, Manny Monthe from Bath City and Omar Bugiel from Ryman Premier side Worthing. A big decision that has ultimately paid off and perhaps is an insight into a steely mentality able to cope with opinions from outside the club. “We always get the moneybags shout,” Cooper says. “I heard Kevin Davies on BT Sport on Sunday say our budget is three-times Lincoln’s. So that must mean Lincoln’s is £300,000.
“But that’s fine. We’ve got ourselves in a position where people say, because of the money, we should get to the final or should be up and around in promotion. Which is right. But only one team can go up. We’ve got ourselves to a situation where we’ve got one game to win promotion, and we’d have settled for that at the beginning.
“I had to do major surgery during the season, for one reason or another, and hopefully it’s come together at the right time.
“We invested in some younger players for the squad. Small transfer fees and much lower wages. Manny Monthe, Ethan Pinnock, Shamir Mullings are coming good now – we’ve added some re-sale value. They’re good lads, not big names.
“They’ve been great, they have a good spirit about them and we seem to be in a decent place, right now.”
Cooper knows the danger Tranmere Rovers and their experienced players pose – even if his side have taken four points off the league’s runners-up including a 1-0 away victory in the final weeks of the regular season.
But he feels his players are capable of taking the little club on the hill into the Football League for the first time ever and they will be prepared right down to the nth degree to give them that chance.
“Tranmere are a big club at this level – a massive club,” Cooper says. “They’ve got experienced players throughout the team even though they’ve had some injuries. We’ve got everybody fit and I think it will be who performs on the day.
“The players know all their tickets have been sorted, we know the itinerary down to the minute. All they’ve got to worry about is the game.
“Training is all for the game, in terms of little pointers of how we think we can help that in key stages of the match. We’ve got to stay in the game early on, make sure we have a chance, because we’ve got a lot of younger players who have good legs.
“Tranmere have more experience, no doubt about that, and rightly so they’ll fancy their chances. But we’ve got some good players, as we’ve shown at stages during the season.
“If our good players are smart, we have a chance.”