Foster keen to quell disciplinary issues
Credit: Extratime Team (ETPhotos)
Recently-appointed Dundalk FC manager Ian Foster took a few minutes out of his busy pre-season preparations to talk to Emmet Maloney.
Emmet Maloney – How is the pre-season going?
Ian Foster – Pre-season up to date has gone very well. We’ve had a great response from the players. Obviously it's new surroundings for a lot of us, myself and my assistant Wayne Hatswell included. The first week or so was getting to know you, different ideas, different way of training at times, getting our point across of how we want to play and making sure that the lads know everything that is expected of them. They’ve been first class, the players have been brilliant, they’re working incredibly hard of late.
EM – It’s been slow to take off this season. Is that down to the club making “realistic” offers, or is it that it’s taken time to identify the players that you wanted?
IF – It’s a bit of everything. I think the first thing I did was speak to the squad that was here, last years' squad. The ones that I wanted to speak to, I spoke to. I sat down and spoke to the lads that I wanted to speak to, made offers to those players. Not many of them were too pleased with the offers, but they were the offers that I made. Shaun Kelly and Liam Burns were two lads who took time to think over it and see if the grass was any greener, if you like, and I think what they’ve realised is that the contract offer I was making was fair, competitive and in this day and age is what’s on offer really. The penny hasn’t dropped with one or two still out there, they’re still asking for money that just isn’t about. The budget here is cut from last year we have to be very careful and very diligent with the money that I hand out and that’s what I’ve done. It took time and slowly but surely were getting there.
EM – What areas of the team do you still want to strengthen?
IF – Certainly midfield and up front would be two parts of the team where I think we are still a little bit light. We’re looking to add to the squad every day. We’re making calls and exploring avenues but it’s all about players ticking boxes. Are they the right age, the right character, right ability? Do they live in the area? Do they have to move up here? Can we get them on the right money? It’s about ticking boxes and they’ve got to tick them all to get a contract. Ultimately we’re looking for bright young players who’ve got a future in the game and are out to impress and they want to further their careers and they can only further their careers by doing well for Dundalk FC and that’s what we’re looking at.
EM – They need to be hungry?
IF – Absolutely. It’s something that I had last year and it’s something I can sense with the young players now, it’s that sense of hunger and urgency. They want to impress, they want to get better, they want to learn and ultimately they want to be earning the big bucks. If they do well at this football club no one here will stand in their way.
EM – What are your ambitions for this season?
IF – The players have individual and collective targets they’ll all be given, the collective targets will be points, they’ll be given a target of points for every round of nine games and if we get to those targets I believe we will finish the season very well. I’m not going to say what the targets are. We want to be competitive in this division and we want to be fighting for European places. It’s not going to be easy, I think the league will be even more competitive this year than it was last year. If you take the top two out of it everyone else is going to be fighting, it’s going to be a tough season. I don’t particularly like the four times, playing each other home and away twice. There are no hiding places, everyone knows everything about everyone's squad which is fine, but I’d prefer to play a few more teams just once home and once away. Even three times is better than the four, but that’s the way it is, that’s the rules of the competition and that’s it. It will be very competitive I’m sure.
EM - Do you see the pitch at Oriel helping you?
IF – I think so. We’ve got to use it to our advantage,. It’s a fantastic surface to train on, you can zip the ball around and when it's wet it skids across the surface. What we will have is that all my players are used to training on it and playing on it, I just hope that they can remember how to play on grass as well so that we don’t get unstuck away from home. It’s our home pitch, that’s what it is, we’ll use it to our advantage, we’ll get on with it and we’ll make it as difficult as we possibly can for teams to come and beat us. It’s got to be "Fortress Oriel", people have got to not want to come here and they’ve got to be aware that if they come here and they want to take points off us that it’s not going to be an easy night for them. We won’t be any pushovers, we won’t be roll-overs. Although I’ll have some young players in the side they’ll all be organised, they’ll know their jobs and responsibilities and we’ll make it very difficult for teams to come here and gets points. That’s the idea anyway.
EM – What kind of formation are you going to favour?
IF – Well to be honest, I don’t know, we’ll wait until the full personnel are in. I’m not nailed down on formations. We have a way of playing, which ever formation suits our way of playing best against which ever opposition it may be, then we’ll use that formation. I’m not nailed on 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. If you look at last year (with Galway United) we played 4-3-3 at the start of the season with O’Shea and O’Brien pushed on. We finished the season with a narrow midfield, a diamond if you like with a holding midfield player, two central midfield players and John Russell in the hole just behind the two strikers, we also reverted to 4-4-2. It will be dependent on the opposition, depending on who we are playing, where we are playing and what bodies we’ve got available. We’re very flexible. I think all good players can play in any formation and we can change to suit. We’ve changed it already a couple of times in pre-season to have a look at one or two things, where results don’t matter. You know you can get things wrong before the season where you can reflect on a formation in pre-season that didn’t particularly work then you can rule that one out. That’s what we’re looking at over the seven pre-season games. We’re looking at changing things and seeing if they work for us.
EM – Last season discipline was a big problem. How are you going to address that?
IF – Yeah, that won’t happen again, it just won’t happen. Looking through the squad, who have we got from last year? I think we’ve got four signed on from last year. I don’t know what the reasons were for it last year and I don’t particularly want to know. We have a code of discipline here that they will adhere to and if they don’t then they won’t be at the football club. We have a small squad and suspensions will hurt us. If it’s a suspension for a tackle I’ve not got a problem with that, if players are competing and having a battle, you can’t do anything about that and I wouldn’t want to. If it's petulance, if it’s kicking balls away, if it’s shouting at referees, then we’ll come down on them like a ton of bricks. It’s no different to what Wayne or I would be used to throughout our careers, it's professionalism. It’s a professional outlook on football, making sure you look after yourself both here and away from the football club. Hopefully we won’t have to fine anybody, the lads attitude has been fantastic. The things that annoys both of us would be lateness and dissent. Everything else apart from that, hopefully it won’t be a problem.
EM – Tactically what can we expect?
IF – Tactics will always be the same, we’ll always get the ball down and play. Play the right way and play in the right manner. With regards to formation that could change dependent on where we are.
EM – Would you be thinking of playing a narrow formation away from home?
IF – Again, it depends on where we are playing. You have to give respect to the opposition and can you counter how they play. Most teams in this division play a 4-4-2. The better teams are braver and have both wide players with chalk on their boots and make it difficult for you sometimes. If you play a narrow system that is a way of getting out of it by playing wide players against overlapping full-backs. We’ll do our homework on opposition and play whichever way we see fit to. Hopefully teams will be worrying about us and not the other way around.
Emmet Maloney – How is the pre-season going?
Ian Foster – Pre-season up to date has gone very well. We’ve had a great response from the players. Obviously it's new surroundings for a lot of us, myself and my assistant Wayne Hatswell included. The first week or so was getting to know you, different ideas, different way of training at times, getting our point across of how we want to play and making sure that the lads know everything that is expected of them. They’ve been first class, the players have been brilliant, they’re working incredibly hard of late.
EM – It’s been slow to take off this season. Is that down to the club making “realistic” offers, or is it that it’s taken time to identify the players that you wanted?
IF – It’s a bit of everything. I think the first thing I did was speak to the squad that was here, last years' squad. The ones that I wanted to speak to, I spoke to. I sat down and spoke to the lads that I wanted to speak to, made offers to those players. Not many of them were too pleased with the offers, but they were the offers that I made. Shaun Kelly and Liam Burns were two lads who took time to think over it and see if the grass was any greener, if you like, and I think what they’ve realised is that the contract offer I was making was fair, competitive and in this day and age is what’s on offer really. The penny hasn’t dropped with one or two still out there, they’re still asking for money that just isn’t about. The budget here is cut from last year we have to be very careful and very diligent with the money that I hand out and that’s what I’ve done. It took time and slowly but surely were getting there.
EM – What areas of the team do you still want to strengthen?
IF – Certainly midfield and up front would be two parts of the team where I think we are still a little bit light. We’re looking to add to the squad every day. We’re making calls and exploring avenues but it’s all about players ticking boxes. Are they the right age, the right character, right ability? Do they live in the area? Do they have to move up here? Can we get them on the right money? It’s about ticking boxes and they’ve got to tick them all to get a contract. Ultimately we’re looking for bright young players who’ve got a future in the game and are out to impress and they want to further their careers and they can only further their careers by doing well for Dundalk FC and that’s what we’re looking at.
EM – They need to be hungry?
IF – Absolutely. It’s something that I had last year and it’s something I can sense with the young players now, it’s that sense of hunger and urgency. They want to impress, they want to get better, they want to learn and ultimately they want to be earning the big bucks. If they do well at this football club no one here will stand in their way.
EM – What are your ambitions for this season?
IF – The players have individual and collective targets they’ll all be given, the collective targets will be points, they’ll be given a target of points for every round of nine games and if we get to those targets I believe we will finish the season very well. I’m not going to say what the targets are. We want to be competitive in this division and we want to be fighting for European places. It’s not going to be easy, I think the league will be even more competitive this year than it was last year. If you take the top two out of it everyone else is going to be fighting, it’s going to be a tough season. I don’t particularly like the four times, playing each other home and away twice. There are no hiding places, everyone knows everything about everyone's squad which is fine, but I’d prefer to play a few more teams just once home and once away. Even three times is better than the four, but that’s the way it is, that’s the rules of the competition and that’s it. It will be very competitive I’m sure.
EM - Do you see the pitch at Oriel helping you?
IF – I think so. We’ve got to use it to our advantage,. It’s a fantastic surface to train on, you can zip the ball around and when it's wet it skids across the surface. What we will have is that all my players are used to training on it and playing on it, I just hope that they can remember how to play on grass as well so that we don’t get unstuck away from home. It’s our home pitch, that’s what it is, we’ll use it to our advantage, we’ll get on with it and we’ll make it as difficult as we possibly can for teams to come and beat us. It’s got to be "Fortress Oriel", people have got to not want to come here and they’ve got to be aware that if they come here and they want to take points off us that it’s not going to be an easy night for them. We won’t be any pushovers, we won’t be roll-overs. Although I’ll have some young players in the side they’ll all be organised, they’ll know their jobs and responsibilities and we’ll make it very difficult for teams to come here and gets points. That’s the idea anyway.
EM – What kind of formation are you going to favour?
IF – Well to be honest, I don’t know, we’ll wait until the full personnel are in. I’m not nailed down on formations. We have a way of playing, which ever formation suits our way of playing best against which ever opposition it may be, then we’ll use that formation. I’m not nailed on 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. If you look at last year (with Galway United) we played 4-3-3 at the start of the season with O’Shea and O’Brien pushed on. We finished the season with a narrow midfield, a diamond if you like with a holding midfield player, two central midfield players and John Russell in the hole just behind the two strikers, we also reverted to 4-4-2. It will be dependent on the opposition, depending on who we are playing, where we are playing and what bodies we’ve got available. We’re very flexible. I think all good players can play in any formation and we can change to suit. We’ve changed it already a couple of times in pre-season to have a look at one or two things, where results don’t matter. You know you can get things wrong before the season where you can reflect on a formation in pre-season that didn’t particularly work then you can rule that one out. That’s what we’re looking at over the seven pre-season games. We’re looking at changing things and seeing if they work for us.
EM – Last season discipline was a big problem. How are you going to address that?
IF – Yeah, that won’t happen again, it just won’t happen. Looking through the squad, who have we got from last year? I think we’ve got four signed on from last year. I don’t know what the reasons were for it last year and I don’t particularly want to know. We have a code of discipline here that they will adhere to and if they don’t then they won’t be at the football club. We have a small squad and suspensions will hurt us. If it’s a suspension for a tackle I’ve not got a problem with that, if players are competing and having a battle, you can’t do anything about that and I wouldn’t want to. If it's petulance, if it’s kicking balls away, if it’s shouting at referees, then we’ll come down on them like a ton of bricks. It’s no different to what Wayne or I would be used to throughout our careers, it's professionalism. It’s a professional outlook on football, making sure you look after yourself both here and away from the football club. Hopefully we won’t have to fine anybody, the lads attitude has been fantastic. The things that annoys both of us would be lateness and dissent. Everything else apart from that, hopefully it won’t be a problem.
EM – Tactically what can we expect?
IF – Tactics will always be the same, we’ll always get the ball down and play. Play the right way and play in the right manner. With regards to formation that could change dependent on where we are.
EM – Would you be thinking of playing a narrow formation away from home?
IF – Again, it depends on where we are playing. You have to give respect to the opposition and can you counter how they play. Most teams in this division play a 4-4-2. The better teams are braver and have both wide players with chalk on their boots and make it difficult for you sometimes. If you play a narrow system that is a way of getting out of it by playing wide players against overlapping full-backs. We’ll do our homework on opposition and play whichever way we see fit to. Hopefully teams will be worrying about us and not the other way around.
