Manager gives his views ahead of Tuesday's clash with Huddersfield Town at the Reebok Stadium
Dougie Freedman has every belief that his side can bounce back from the weekend’s defeat at the Riverside, but has warned his players to not underestimate the threat which their Huddersfield counterparts will pose come kick off on Tuesday evening.
Despite a 1-0 reverse to Middlesbrough bringing Wanderers’ eight-game unbeaten run to an end on Saturday afternoon, the manager has encouraged his team to take confidence from their display against Aitor Karanka’s men and return to winning ways at the first time of asking.
"What happened against Middlesbrough was very simple - we were one kick away from keeping an unbeaten run, so you can’t get too disappointed," he said in his pre-match press conference. "I felt that we contained them very well and limited them to rarely any shots really. I don’t think they hit the target at all – it was a case of two penalties. We missed, they scored and that’s life.
"It gives us an opportunity to look forward now as we always do. We’ve been working very hard at the training ground over the last couple of weeks on what the likes of Watford and Huddersfield do – they are very similar teams, so we know that we’ve got to be 100% on our game to beat them and we’ll be that."
With the Whites having enjoyed a number of impressive results particularly on their travels in recent months, Freedman explained that he fully expects Wanderers to be firing on all cylinders on their home turf during the remainder of the campaign given their displays of late.
"I feel like we have been on a fantastic run," he said. "We’ve really wrestled our way out of the bottom from a disappointing start but we’ve shown a lot of character, a lot of togetherness and the lads have been fully committed - it’s just great really to see that the fans were behind us in a difficult moment.
"We’ve since changed that round and we’ve got some results, but now we have got to bounce back - it’s as simple as that.
"If we’re going to do anything this year we have got to have the capabilities to bounce back. We’re looking forward to the Huddersfield game as it’s another opportunity to play in front of a home crowd and keep the performances up."
He added: "I think the performances have been very good at home - some results haven’t gone our way, but when we played against Millwall in our last home game I thought we were excellent.
"The way we passed the ball and created chances, and if the truth be known really we should have scored more goals. It’s an opportunity to bounce back and to play in front of the home fans.
"We just need to make sure that were relaxed enough to play good football and I think when we do that at the Reebok were a game for anybody."