"The players are hungry to play and if they’re given an opportunity they have to grab it with both hands," says the manager ahead of Wednesday's game at Blackburn
Dougie Freedman looked ahead to the midweek derby away at Blackburn and pointed to the growing confidence around the club which he believes can be the foundation for success.
Wanderers travel to Ewood Park on Wednesday evening buoyed by David Ngog’s late leveller in Saturday’s trip to Brighton – a match where the Whites survived an onslaught from Gus Poyet’s Seagulls.
And the manager believes the Frenchman’s 96th-minute strike on the south coast is further evidence that his side are developing a never-say-die-attitude.
Reflecting on the weekend’s point, Freedman said: "We could have done better, we didn’t perform in the way that I know we can. But we hung in there, we stuck to our task. We made sure we were hard to beat and we showed the desire and the determination to keep going right to the end and we got the goal. Even if we hadn’t have scored I still saw the characteristics which form the building blocks of a good team.
“Confidence is growing throughout the team and there’s a lot of belief in the squad. The celebrations at the end were not so much celebrations of relief, but celebrations because we got what we felt we deserved. We don’t like to get beat.”
Wanderers will be without the suspended Mark Davies for the Rovers clash, after the midfielder picked up his fifth booking of the campaign at the Amex. But Freedman insisted that there is good competition for places in his squad, and there are plenty of players eager to fill in for the midfielder.
He said: “The suspension to Mark Davies isn’t too much of an issue because it was getting to the stage where we were thinking of giving him a rest anyway. I’ve said before and I don’t mind saying again, in the modern game there has to be a degree of squad rotation.
“When there is rotation the players are hungry to play and if they’re given an opportunity they have to grab it with both hands. It may have been a problem in the past that some players had been a bit complacent. They may have thought that they could turn up, train and play on a Saturday.
“I want to make sure that everybody feels a part of it, but the lads know that they have to work hard throughout the week to get picked on a Saturday. We’ve got to be in it together, it’s not one person that will take us forward, it’s the whole club. That’s the message what I’m trying to spread.”