Southend United manager Paul Sturrock: Wins are good but we need to convert more of our chances (From Echo)

Southend United manager Paul Sturrock: Wins are good but we need to convert more of our chances

1:00pm Friday 7th September 2012 in Sport By Paul Sturrock

IT’S obviously been good to get two victories under our belt this week but we do need to start being more clinical in front of goal.

Against Wycombe last weekend we had the opportunities to get a second goal after going ahead and when we didn’t get it I think we started to get a bit anxious the longer the game went on.

On Tuesday night we were quite wasteful again in our game with AFC Wimbledon and we should have had the game sewn up inside the opening 25 minutes.

We failed to convert a number of excellent chances and Wimbledon took advan-tage of that by taking the lead with their first shot of the night.

Thankfully, we were able to fight back and win it but that wasn’t the case against Accrington.

We had 20 shots that day and they had just one on target so we do need to work on putting our oppor-tunities away.

That’s something I have stressed to the team ahead of tomorrow’s game with Dagenham. We’ve had good reports back on them and they’ve said how strong and athletic they are as a team.

They’re quite young and packed full of energy and in John Still they have a good and very experienced manager, so it will be a tough test.

As a result, there are again some difficult decisions to be made, including who to play in goal.

Paul Smith did well on his debut the other night but we have Cameron Belford available too and I will be watching them both very closely in training.

I will also talk to the pair of them before taking a closer look at the opposition and deciding what will be best to do.

Kevan Hurst is also fit to play again but David Martin will face another late fitness test on his ankle.

He’s had an injection to help cure the problem and we will have to wait and see how he responds to that.

Ryan Hall definitely won’t be involved either because he isn’t mentally tuned in to playing for this football club.

Because of that, I don’t think he would be a benefit to the team and we will have to wait to see what happens with him once the loan window opens again tonight.

Teams panic when the window shuts for permanent signings but seven days later you can bring people in on loan and we’re very much a club who are a part of the loan society.

We will look to bring people in and I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to work out where in our squad we need to strengthen.