We’ll steer clear of drop: Quigley
SCOTT Quigley insists there is enough talent in the Rochdale squad to pull the club clear of relegation from the Football League.
Bottom-of-the-table Dale take on Newport County at Rodney Parade this afternoon looking to bounce back from last weekend’s 2-1 home defeat against Doncaster Rovers.
Boss Jim Bentley was disappointed with the lack of bravery from his players and will be encouraging them to express themselves better today.
And Quigley believes if the players start to throw off the shackles of fear and pressure that comes with a poor start to the campaign, Dale can recover.
“There is plenty to look forward to and I believe we can easily turn this around. When I was at Barrow we were in a similar situation. Maybe not bottom, but we were down there. Three, four, five results on the bounce and we’ll be clear of it and then you are looking up instead of down,” said the striker.
“It would be stupid of me to write us off, there’s a lot of football to be played and the gaffer hasn’t really had a transfer window for himself and hasn’t had that long to work with us. We’ve had a couple of Tuesday games which has probably killed what he wanted to implement on us. The lads were disappointed (after the Doncaster loss) but we know we have more, which is a good thing.”
Quigley is confident Dale can turn things around – starting with the trip to Newport. However, he feels the side could do with toughening up.
“Picking ourselves up starts on the training groundg,” he said.
“The gaffer is going to have to toughen us up because I think we were a little bit too soft. We’re going to have to shape up and regroup and look towards Newport. We can easily go there and get three points as we did at Colchester and we should have done last Saturday. But that’s football, sometimes you don’t get the rub of the green.”
Quigley insists he wouldn’t have opted for Dale if he believed they were relegation fodder.
“If I’m honest I wouldn’t have come here if I thought we were a relegation certainty,” he said.
“Scunthorpe last year, no disrespect to them, but I looked at them a few times and thought they are definitely going down. I didn’t get that sense here and that’s why I came here. I could have easily gone somewhere else, to a club who are not in a relegation battle at all, and I know Jim, he’s a good character and a really positive manager. They’ve been tough games we’ve had. Leyton Orient was the only one I thought we were outdone by. The others have been very small margins.
“First and foremost we we’re disappointed with another loss (against Doncaster). It’s always hard to take. There were some positives in there but we weren’t good enough in the first half, ultimately. I thought it was better in the second half up to their goal, we had some good chances just before they scored and then their goal just sort of killed us. We really fancied three wins in three games, we’d trained really well in the week and it’s just small margins all the time.
“It’s important we stick together. Doncaster have only just come down so to push them all the way is perhaps a positive, but all the lads were bitterly disappointed.”