Kieron Dyer spoke with the media on Friday morning ahead of the Spireites’ trip to Tranmere Rovers on Saturday afternoon (3pm), discussing how preparations were going for the fixture.
He began with positive news on the injury front, saying: “Dylan Duffy is fine (after returning against Fleetwood). We’ve had other good news as well in that Will Grigg is back on the grass and could feature on the weekend. John Fleck is back as well.
“I know he isn’t in our 22-man squad at the minute, but Ryheem Sheckleford is back training as well, so it’s just Gunner Elliott, Matt Dibley-Dias and Luke Butterfield who are the only injuries. We’ve near enough got a full squad, so everyone is raring to go. It gives the manager and the coaches a lot of options, so we’d rather be in this position than where we were at times last season.”
On what the squad has been working on, Dyer added: “Since the Colchester game, we haven’t conceded a goal from open play. One of the things that we get labelled with us quite a bit is that we’re very predictable, we play 4-2-3-1, we like to do a high-press, we’re open an expansive, and I think that from a defensive side of the game, we’ve changed quite a bit.
“We played the majority of the Burton game in a mid-block, which is very unlike us. We were very solid and they had one shot on target in the 90 minutes, if I’m not mistaken. But, we weren’t very good with the ball, so it was trying to get the balance.
“We then played against Salford and, if you know Paul Cook’s teams, both full backs are flying. We knew their threat in Kadeem Harris, and we basically played the game with our right back attacking, so we made a subtle change and it kept Harris really quiet.
“As a team we are having to be adaptable because we can’t have results like we had against Colchester, and you can’t say it was a blip because of the Crewe game.”
Finally, he looked at Tranmere Rovers and their threats.
“We’ve watched their 4-1 win from last weekend,” he said. “They were very good on the day and their home form has been a bit iffy, so that result was great for them and they’ll be full of confidence.
“We’ve obviously looked at the game we played there last season because we were on a hell of a run, and that result came out of nowhere.
“We know their threats, they’re going to come out aggressively, they’re going to press us and they’ll be on the front foot, but we’re looking forward to it because the players want to show a reaction for an away performance and we want to see a reaction from them as well.
“It’s a game that, if I was playing, I’d love to play. They have a decent crowd, they’re one of the bigger clubs in the division and they’re going to come on to us.”
