Omer Riza spoke to the press to preview our Sky Bet Championship clash with Plymouth Argyle on Saturday afternoon.
With a series of First Team players returning from injury and others potentially missing this weekend’s fixture, Omer began with a fitness update on his squad.
“Joe Ralls has been back training and he’s back to being with the squad. Ollie Tanner is progressing with his injury, he’s out of his boot and he’s better than where he was. David Turnbull is training, he’s warming up with the team now. Hopefully next week he’ll be doing some technical drills.
“Isaak Davies is also training and he’s up for selection in the squad. Calum Chambers is feeling better now but he’s been out for over a week, so we need to make sure he’s in a place where he’s physically strong again. He’s not ill anymore, but potentially he won’t be involved at the weekend. He needs to get his strength up again. We have had a lot of illnesses over the past few weeks and it has gone right through the team. It’s been tough to manage.
“Alex Robertson has had a hamstring problem. He’s been training, but he’s still feeling it, so it’s too early for him. We have to manage them accordingly because we don’t want to set them back.”
The Pilgrims recorded a 1-1 draw against Luton Town in midweek and currently sit 23rd in the second-tier table.
Omer continued: “If we win on Saturday against Plymouth, it takes us those points above them and they’re still in that bottom part of the table and they’re really having to win two or three games to go above us. It’s massive, same with the Hull game. We know how big they are, but at the same time, nothing is certain in football. I don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we feel that if we fail, there’s no comeback, because that’s not the case, but we know that they’re really important and how we’ve got to approach them.
“After the start we had, we’ve done well to get ourselves to where we are, but we could be in a better position with the points we’ve given away when we were leading or not being able to see a game out, which would see us in a more comfortable position. The positivity is there in that we are approaching games in the right way, we now just have to do the job."
In the reverse fixture at Cardiff City Stadium, the Bluebirds recorded a 5-0 victory in one of the highlights of the campaign so far.
“I went and watched them at Luton and they are what they are," Omer added. "They’ve brought in some players through the team, they’re aggressive in their nature, they don’t try to play, they play forward earlier and want to play in the final third.
"For me, I just don’t feel it’s fighting fire with fire. We have to win our battles and win the battles that they try to put on us, but we’ve got quality, we need to get the ball down and we need to play. That’ll be what we’re looking to do against them on Saturday."