Henry Newman praised the attitude, application and quality of Barnet’s players in training this week as they prepare for Saturday’s Sky Bet League Two clash at Yeovil Town.
Newman and Rossi Eames have had eight days to prepare for the match owing to the fact the Bees were without a fixture last weekend.
And the Academy manager has been impressed with what he has seen in that time after moving over to first-team affairs last week.
“I’ve seen quite a lot of the first team still,” Newman confirmed. “Saturday afternoons are only really taken up if there’s a young player out on loan and I’m going out to watch them. So I still watched a fair amount of first-team football and I knew the group.
“But you don’t really get to know the players until you get in and amongst it. So the important thing when I came in was not to have any pre-conceptions on anybody and make sure everybody had a free opportunity to show us what they’re made of as character and as a footballer.
“The attitude, application and quality we’ve demanded from them has been absolutely outstanding.
It has been a non-stop eight days for Newman and Eames who took in Yeovil’s game against Crawley Town on Saturday before witnessing Stevenage’s tussle with Newport County on Tuesday evening.
“The first three or four days were very hectic if I’m being honest,” he said. “We’ve talked lots of times this week about getting the balance right between what we’ll tweak and what we want to keep the same.
“You’re thinking about those little bits to make sure you get everything right when you hit the ground running.
“This week has very much been focused on the football; preparing for Yeovil tomorrow and we’ve had a really good week preparing for it.”
Yeovil go into Saturday’s game unbeaten in six League Two fixtures and having picked up back-to-back wins over Crawley Town (5-0) and MK Dons (4-1).
But Newman insists the Bees have not taken too much notice of those results and are instead focused on their own threat.
“They’re moving in the right direction just as we are,” explained Newman. “They play some good football in their attacking half of the pitch; they look to combine, get forward runners and get shots on goal. That’s that we’d expect from any team moving in the right direction in League Two.
“We’re very much focused on our gameplan, what we want to do and our players going out there to get the performance and result we need.”
You can watch Henry’s full video interview, in which he also discusses Jack Taylor and provides an injury update, below:
