I WAS HAPPY TO BE WRONG ABOUT POWELL
I CAN admit that I didn’t think I was going to like Nick Powell. You can get perceptions of people and, having played against him, I was adamant that he wouldn’t be my cup of tea.
But thankfully I was wrong. He was critical of his own performances and I can always warm to someone like that, who wants to improve. He works hard, is good around the place and you can tell he wants the club to do well.
We had some great conversations, we got on really well and I still text him now and again.
One big factor in his development was the arrival of Steven Fletcher. He got him in the gym more and they became best buddies.
It was nice to see. When Fletch came in you could see he was a big lad and he talked about his gym habits. Powell and Liam
Lindsay joined in and you could see the improvement. The physios deserve a lot of praise too because he came with a chequered history and he’s done brilliantly, getting a lot of game time and making a massive impact.
So it’s a big blow that we’re going to lose him for so long. You could see by the way he was walking it was a bad one.
He’s our main player. We tick better when he’s in the team whether it’s how he presses, scores goals or assists. We might play one up front, but with him he can make it a fluid system.
Luckily we have a really big squad and with five strikers we can tweak the system. In a strange way it might make us more direct and that could help.
We’ve played some great stuff recently and Powelly is great to watch when he gets in the gaps but two up front will hopefully give us a big threat. The wing-backs put in some great crosses against Bournemouth so fingers crossed we can take advantage this weekend. It is great to see Tyrese Campbell back involved. He’s done brilliantly. The injury was horrific and he’s worked very hard to come back. I saw the start of that work and credit to him and the staff.
If we can keep him fit, we saw even in the short time he was on the pitch on Tuesday those runs he makes which will give us a real boost.