ROTHERHAM will be tough opposition for us tonight.

I watched them at Dagenham a couple of weeks ago and they dominated the game for long spells.

They were winning when I left and I saw enough that day to know they will be dangerous opponents for us.

Rotherham have some quality players and they have enough about them to hurt us if we aren’t at our best.

We will also be hoping the game goes ahead ad our ground-staff really have been doing everything in their powers to stop it being called off.

The snow has now been cleared off the pitch and it’s fine about from one or two areas which the heaters are now on.

We hope they can do the trick because we really want to play.

Last Saturday at Plymouth felt like a defeat.

We let ourselves down in the last few minutes and a lack of professionalism cost us dear.

These things happen in football sometimes though and you have to take the rough with the smooth.

However, it’s now important we bounce back and I will be making a couple of changes to the team.

I feel a couple of players need to be dropped because of their form and there are others who deserve to be given a chance to play.

I have also spoken to the team about how we must improve our defending and we are again waiting on whether Mark Phillips will be fit to play.

He’s been making slow progress from his groin injury and he’s not been helped by the weather because the snow has stopped him being able to do ball work or even much running so that’s hindered his progress.

Thankfully, the team have been able to train well though and we’ve been able to use the artificial pitches over at the playfootball.net centre.

That’s been great and we’re certainly a lot better prepared than we were last year when the cold weather really caught us out.

Hopefully we will see the benefits of that tonight and we also hope to have Jack Sampson back available.

He trained again yesterday after recovering from a back problem and, providing he suffers no reaction to that, he will be back involved tonight.

Jack has showed signs of promise during his time with us and we will definitely be extending his loan spell which I understand expires after the Rotherham game.

Unfortunately, the news is not so good on Ryan Leonard who now looks set to miss most if not all of the rest of the season with a knee problem.

It’s a real blow for the lad but we’ve been pleased with how he’s done and he will be offered a new contract to remain at the football club.

Away from Southend, I was not surprised to see Fabio Capello resign as England manager.

I think it’s been on the cards for a while because his relationship with the Football Association has not been too rosy for a while now.

I have some sympathy with Capello too as I feel John Terry should have stayed as captain until a time when he was found guilty of what he’s been accused of.

But what’s done is done and my choice to replace Capello would be Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, who has been here so long now that he’s half English anyway!

I would expect the job will actually go to Harry Redknapp but one thing is definitely certain - the new manager will not be Scottish!