Brian Barry-Murphy spoke to the press at CCS ahead of City’s away clash against Reading on Saturday, reflecting on Tuesday’s draw away from home against Huddersfield Town.
“It was a long journey back for us on Tuesday night, so we tried to recover as best we could yesterday,” Brian began. “The focus within the Club has now quickly shifted to Saturday. Our focus is on winning; it’s good to have a clear mindset to make this game as simple as possible. The main thing for the players is to understand the best way to win.”
Yousef Salech had a large impact on Tuesday’s game, scoring in stoppage time to secure a point on the road, and Brian spoke about the striker's return from injury.
“It was nice to see Yousef have that feeling of scoring, as he’s done so many times before, and to prove that he can do it without any worries. He’s gone through a lot in this recovery process, so to get a goal of such importance for the team and the Club is great for him.”
With just four games left of the 2025/26 season, Brian discussed the progress made by his team throughout the course of the campaign, and looked ahead to an exciting final few weeks.
He said: “The most exciting part of being at this Club now is the potential that we see in our team and the improvement since the start of the season. It’s exceeded my expectations. The team's desire to improve means there is so much to achieve, which is why it’s such a great place to be now.
“When you’ve been in the game so long, you understand how difficult it is to be towards the top of the table, which is where we’ve been so often this season. It’s a great experience for the team. A lot of our young players haven’t experienced fighting for promotion, so to go through it and have that excitement is great. But above all, we must play the way we want to play.”
The boss concluded with a comment on our weekend opponents, who currently sit 10th in the table, five points shy of the Play-Off places.
“Reading are a very dangerous team. They have an assembled squad of players who have experience at a higher level. The qualities are obvious, so our focus turns to them, but also to ourselves over the next couple of days to make sure we’re in the best position to reproduce the performances we’ve been distributing.”