North End head into the festive run of fixtures on a run of seven games without defeat, but he still wants more from his squad.
The PNE boss spoke ahead of the Boxing Day visit of Barnsley across the Pennines and admitted that there could be no let up with games coming thick and fast over the coming weeks.
“The league table is tight,” he said. “When we came into the dressing room after our positive result at the weekend, it was nice to see the other results go for us.
“There are so many games still to be played you just have to concentrate on what you need to do. We can’t affect what other people are doing – the results they are getting – we just have to keep performing, week in, week out.
“I have no doubt that the table will change over the next few weeks and months; all we want to do is to make sure we win as many games as possible and try to get into that top two and stay there.”
The visitors entered Christmas with a good result in what was manager Danny Wilson’s 1,000th as a manager and he is someone that the Lilywhites chief has a lot of time for.
“Barnsley are a mixture of some good young players and some experienced campaigners,” continued the 45-year-old.
“They have a manager I hold in a high regard. To have achieved 1,000 games in management at the weekend is a fantastic achievement – so I have a huge amount of respect for Danny and what he has done at all levels of football, with different teams.
“We have to be aware that on the day they can be a threat. They had a good result against Orient and they’ll be without their goalkeeper, but we will be respectful of them, but concentrate on the work we are doing.”
With a home game on Boxing Day and a ‘local-ish’ game on 28th the travelling of recent weeks is in the past for the players and fans, but the gaffer is aware that you only get three points irrelevant over where you win a game.
“If you are getting points at both home and away then you are happy. We want to win as many games possible, regardless of where we are playing.
“Our away form has been very good; the performances at home have been really good, so we will go into the game in good spirits and try to build upon the recent run we have been on.
“Being at home on Boxing Day is good for us and then we have a short trip down to Crewe, so we will be prepared as much as we possibly can for both games and try and get the right results,” he added.
“The league table is tight,” he said. “When we came into the dressing room after our positive result at the weekend, it was nice to see the other results go for us.
“There are so many games still to be played you just have to concentrate on what you need to do. We can’t affect what other people are doing – the results they are getting – we just have to keep performing, week in, week out.
“I have no doubt that the table will change over the next few weeks and months; all we want to do is to make sure we win as many games as possible and try to get into that top two and stay there.”
The visitors entered Christmas with a good result in what was manager Danny Wilson’s 1,000th as a manager and he is someone that the Lilywhites chief has a lot of time for.
“Barnsley are a mixture of some good young players and some experienced campaigners,” continued the 45-year-old.
“They have a manager I hold in a high regard. To have achieved 1,000 games in management at the weekend is a fantastic achievement – so I have a huge amount of respect for Danny and what he has done at all levels of football, with different teams.
“We have to be aware that on the day they can be a threat. They had a good result against Orient and they’ll be without their goalkeeper, but we will be respectful of them, but concentrate on the work we are doing.”
With a home game on Boxing Day and a ‘local-ish’ game on 28th the travelling of recent weeks is in the past for the players and fans, but the gaffer is aware that you only get three points irrelevant over where you win a game.
“If you are getting points at both home and away then you are happy. We want to win as many games possible, regardless of where we are playing.
“Our away form has been very good; the performances at home have been really good, so we will go into the game in good spirits and try to build upon the recent run we have been on.
“Being at home on Boxing Day is good for us and then we have a short trip down to Crewe, so we will be prepared as much as we possibly can for both games and try and get the right results,” he added.