DARYL DIGS IN FOR DAGGERS!
McMahon’s men heading in the right direction
DARYL McMahon believes Dagenham & Redbridge’s strong finish to this strangest of seasons show they are building in the right direction.
Daggers made it six wins on the bounce at Wealdstone yesterday with strikers Paul McCallum and Angelo Balanta brimming with confidence and the squad as a whole putting in the kind of consistent performances that McMahon always felt they were capable of.
A mid-season freshen up helped that and the former Ebbsfleet boss says they have been reenergised since February.
“Our biggest problem all season has been scoring goals,” McMahon told The NLP. “Twice this year we got into a good vein of form and both times we were stopped because of Covid and that obviously doesn’t help with building momentum.
“But probably from February time, Macca and Ang haven’t missed a day of training. They’ve formed a partnership now, which we obviously wanted to happen a lot earlier that it did, but when those two are playing well they are a goal threat – for me they are two of the best centre forwards in the division. It’s really helped kick us on.
“Aligned with, in February, the signing of some younger players. Tom Smith from Bath, Saidou Khan from Maidstone, Mo Sagaf, who didn’t have a club. Then Will Wright, who we had in the building, has really kicked on, and Maz (Vilhete) has given us another hungry player with energy and enthusiasm.
Mindset
“To be honest, pre-Christmas, we were lacking a bit of enthusiasm. There was maybe too much moaning and feeling sorry for ourselves. We just needed an injection of people with a bit of belief.
“Possibly that’s because Dagenham for the last two or three years have been a team around the relegation zone and there was a bit of a ‘Here we go again’ feeling.
“It’s a difficult one to change the culture of a football club. You need to reenergise the whole group. Now we’re hoping we can finish as strong as we can and as high as we can.”
McMahon feels the good performances have come on a more consistent basis since February while they’ve found an end product to their positive build-up play.
Keeping faith with the process has paid off but McMahon highlights what a challenging season it has been for everyone in football.
There is no managerial textbook for how to get through a football season in a pandemic and, for all, it has been a case of learning on the job.
“When you have issues at clubs you can always talk to somebody because someone somewhere down the line will have been through it to give you a bit of advice,” McMahon said. “But this is brand new for everybody. Not only the training regime, which all managers have to do at every level, but the other thing maybe not everybody appreciates with everybody’s staff and players, we’re not millionaires in this league.
“People have got bills to pay. People have got mental health issues, people are locked in their houses, partners might have lost jobs, they might be trying to homeschool as well as go to training. It’s really important that we help our players and staff to get through this. Yes, you’re a footballer, but you’re person first.
“As much as everyone in football focuses on results and what you’ve got to do, there is a bigger picture sometimes. Hopefully we are through the worst of all that now.”
McMahon thinks training protocols and lack of contact time with squads has shown in some of the inconsistent results across football but he’s confident the Daggers are heading in the right direction for when normality does return.
“We just want to make sure we finish the season strongly so when we come back for pre-season we come back with a positive mindset to attack next season.”