Darlington boss wants a better start
Posted on 20th December 2006
Darlington manager Dave Penney has urged his players to start their games better. Quakers have lost their last three league games and need to return to winning ways fast in order to stop the gap between themselves and the play–off pack, currently standing at five points, becoming any larger.
Penney enjoyed a run of six straight wins in all competitions when he arrived but concluded after the game against Notts County that his team are not working as hard as they were during that excellent run. Whilst Penney has identified the start to games as a crucial area to improve upon he is also looking elsewhere to find the reasons for the dip in form.
"We have to keep working hard," said Penney. "We have another tough trip now to Wrexham and we have to make sure we start better. We haven't started any of the three games very well. Even though we scored against Stockport we were poor in the first half. We were poor in the first at Wycombe. You look at all aspects but the main thing is we aren't working as hard as we were during the first six games."
One of the obvious areas for improvement is on the goals front. Quakers have scored only three times in the last four games and goals from strikers since Penney's arrival has been even less. Of Darlington's strikers only Simon Johnson and Gaetano Giallanza have scored.
Penney appears to be ready to charge Johnson with ending that poor run by starting with him at Wrexham this weekend. The former Leeds United man has started the last three games from the bench with Julian Joachim and Alun Armstrong being the preferred choice. However between them the pair have failed to score in twenty–one games.
"Someone has to start scoring goals somewhere so perhaps it is someone else's turn to have a go now," said Penney. "Simon will come back into the equation, although he has always been in my thoughts. He's quite versatile and can play on the left or the right of the front two so we'll have a look at him in training this week, try a few different things and see how it goes."
Earlier Darlington news
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