Robbie Stockdale: We must keep our heads up

Aug 17 2007 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

ROBBIE STOCKDALE reckons Tranmere will need to take level heads and a positive outlook into tomorrow’s League One visit to Gillingham.

Rovers go in search of the first success of the new season at the Priestfield Stadium after suffering narrow defeats in the opening two games.

Experienced full-back Stockdale insists it would be premature and counterproductive to fall into gloomy contemplation of a 2-1 opening day reverse to Leads United and a Carling Cup exit to a single late goal at Stockport in midweek.

Stockdale said: “It is easy to get yourself down too quickly in this game. We have to remember that we are in the first week of the season.

“This isn’t the start we wanted but we have to try and keep level-headed about it. We have got to try and take the positives out of the games we have played.

“We have not played all that badly. We have conceded some silly goals and not quite fired on all cylinders going forward.

“But if we can maintain the plus points we showed in those two games I am sure we can get a result off Gillingham.”

Even so, Stockdale acknowledges that both Tranmere and their Kent hosts, also beaten in the first two games, are under pressure to break the sequence.

“Gillingham are in the same situation as ourselves,” Stockdale said. “We both want to get those first points on the board.

“The Priestfield is never an easy place to go but hopefully we can turn a bit of pressure on to them,” he added.

Gillingham opened with a first day defeat at Cheltenham where two players – Steve Lomas and Ian Cox – were sent off.

Then they were well beaten, 3-0, by Championship club Watford in the Carling Cup on Tuesday when defender Effe Sodje was red-carded.

Stockdale admits Tranmere’s performance at Gillingham last season fell into the “stinker” category.

The 2-0 defeat was televised live.

“That game will be in our thoughts on Saturday,” Stockdale said. “We will want to go there and give a much better account of ourselves for the Tranmere fans who travel down.”

Stockdale believes Tranmere were the architects of their own demise in the opening pair of defeats of the last week.

He said: “You deserved what you get in this game.

“You can’t concede goals like the ones we did against Leeds and expect to take something out of a match.

“There were a lot of good things about our performance against Leeds and at Stockport we played okay without being brilliant. We created a few chances on the night.

“Their goalkeeper made some good saves while Danny Coyne in our goal did not have a save to make until the last 10 minutes.

“But you can’t keep on going on about hard luck stories.

“ You have to change your luck by working hard and that’s what we been doing this week.”

Stockdale, now in his second season at Prenton Park, reckons the four summer signings made by manager Ronnie Moore – Coyne, defenders Ben Chorley and Antony Kay and midfielder had Adnan Ahmed – have spread competition more evenly around the squad.

“We don’t have the biggest of squads but what we do have now is competition for every place,” Stockdale said.

“The team spirit has always been good here and the new lads are already contributing to that.”