Clough will welcome Swansea City to Pride Park this afternoon having seen his side beat Top 3 teams in Nottingham Forest and Newcastle in a three match home winning run.<\/p>\n
And he puts some of that form down to continuity now in his team selection after a run of injuries came to an end.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the eve of the match, Clough said \u201cI think for the first time this season we have got the energy we want in the side<\/p>\n
“And that\u2019s how we want to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had that at Burton in the last few years. Even when we played Manchester United, I think Sir Alex described us as a very athletic side for the Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want legs in the side, players who can run and get around the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe looked at Paul Green\u2019s fitness stats last Saturday against Birmingham in the FA Cup and he ran more than anybody on the pitch.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd his high-intensity running was twice that of the Birmingham midfielders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just highlights what he can do when he gets a few games under his belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about getting players like him back and fit. We definitely missed him (Green) when he was out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve missed them all in their own ways. If you look at Rob Hulse and Kris Commons and the problems they caused Birmingham on Saturday and then Preston, we\u2019ve missed them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve missed a settled defence, we\u2019ve missed all elements, and it\u2019s only when it comes together a little bit \u2013 and it\u2019s early days, we aren\u2019t there by any means \u2013 but it\u2019s only when it comes together you start to think we did miss them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at the team, there\u2019s a nice balance about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got Stephen Pearson and we\u2019ve got Robbie Savage and Green, who we wanted in the team all along.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got good loans in Michael Tonge and Nicky Hunt, there\u2019s Hulse and Commons and a settled defensive partnership.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are things we\u2019ve wanted and been striving to get since August, but we haven\u2019t been able to do on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s settled and we\u2019re just reaping the benefits, but it\u2019s a long way from being the finished article.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clough will welcome Swansea City to Pride Park this afternoon having seen his side beat Top 3 teams in Nottingham Forest and Newcastle in a three match home winning run. And he puts some of that form down to continuity now in his team selection after a run of injuries came to an end. Speaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}