Ryan Esson pledges to keep pushing Strathspey Thistle to improve
Strathspey Thistle manager Ryan Esson is delighted with how his players have responded to his demands over the last couple of months.
In the two months since taking charge at Seafield Park, Esson has led the perennial Highland League strugglers to a draw and two victories – most recently a 6-0 thrashing of Rothes that saw the Jags move off the bottom of the league table.
As far as the former Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Aberdeen goalkeeper is concerned, though, that is just the beginning of what he wants to achieve in Grantown.
He will continue to ask more of his players to help them rise further up the standings, but while further challenges await he is pleased with how his squad have tackled the task at hand to date.
“There are already positives from my time at the club, but there is a long way to go,” Esson explained.
“Two months isn’t a lot of time to implement what I want, and even against Rothes I thought we were sloppier in possession than we have been, we were just really clinical in the final third.
“I will take that, but there is still work to be done on what I’m looking for tactically.
“I sometimes feel that when you put demands on people, they react to it. That can go either way, but I will be putting even more on them over the next few months.
“When I came in, I didn’t want to make drastic changes. There were things off the pitch that needed to be changed, and there are still things that need to be changed on that front, but I haven’t signed a lot of players.
“I didn’t think we were miles away from being a decent team, and we have started to show that.
“If you lose a few games, you start to forget that you’re not bad. I’m hoping that they are starting to get that feeling back of enjoying football again, and wanting to win.
“They have been brilliant since I came in, and now they’re starting to see why I’m asking them to do certain things, so we’re going in the right direction.”
Esson was in a rare situation last weekend as he tried to push Strathspey forward as the club had a free weekend due to Scottish Cup fixtures elsewhere.
Some may look at that as a missed chance to capitalise on momentum that had been built against Rothes, but after a frantic start to managerial life Esson was happy to have something of a break from matches.
“Saturday was my 13th game in two months – it’s mental,” he continued.
“It’s actually probably a bit of a welcome break, because I can go and push them in training.
“Before I could only push them in one session a week, but this week I can do two to push them a little further than I have.
“I’m hoping we’ll have less injuries now, because they are getting more conditioned to playing in high intensity games. That will still take another two or three months to really see the evidence of that, but we are slowly getting that.”
Esson will be hoping that extra hard work will pay off against Fraserburgh at Seaview Park this Saturday.
The team will have to cope without Josh Race, who was sent off against Rothes, while James Fraser and Stephen Rennie missed that triumph a week-and-a-half ago through injury.
Fraserburgh have had a relatively poor start to the season by their own high standards, but while keen to see Strathspey’s home record improve Esson is under no illusions about the magnitude of the challenge his side face this weekend.
“Fraserburgh is a tough team to play,” he added.
“Maybe they will feel they have underachieved this season, but I have watched them a couple of times now and they’ve got experience and a good reputation.
“It’s a home game, and we want to do well at home. We want our home record to be one of our strengths, so it needs to get a little bit better.
“It’s maybe a little bit too nice for teams to come here. We have upgraded things off the pitch, but we want it to be not a nice place to come and play football.
“I don’t really approach games much differently based on them being home or away – what I do is look at the opposition and give them the respect they deserve.
“I look at how we can implement what we want to implement, and look at how we can win games.
“Sometimes that will be an aggressive tactic, others it will be slightly different.”
