Moore: I won’t rest any first teamers

Apr 23 2008 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

LEAGUE ONE points rather than pointers to the future will remain Tranmere’s priority in the last home game of the season this weekend.

Rovers may have run out of road in the campaign to reach the play-offs but manager Ronnie Moore does not see Southend United’s visit to Prenton Park on Saturday as a platform to test some of the younger members of his squad.

Moore said: “This is a results business and we want to be winning games. We’ve just lost three games that could have gone either way and the last thing we want to do is finish the season with five defeats. We want to finish on a high.

“So it is not a question of a saying: ‘Let’s play five kids and have a look at whether they are good enough’. I thing we have to go with our strongest team. Maybe I will put two or three younger players on the bench. If the opportunity comes to have all look at the likes of young Terry Gornell, then we can take it.”

Striker Gornell, a final year apprentice making a good impression in reserve team football this season, found himself on the first-team bench for Tranmere’s 1-0 defeat at Huddersfield last Saturday.

The 18-year-old may have to wait in line for an opportunity behind senior players battling to overcome injuries. They include Steve Davies, Calvin Zola and Jennison Myrie-Williams.

Davies missed the Huddersfield game after picking up an adductor strain in training. The injury is not related to the cruciate ligament surgery that kept the 20-year-old out of action for six months.

Zola has been out of the first-team frame for a month. Moore said: “The hamstring has tormented Calvin throughout his career. We thought he had got over the problem but it came back again and he is the biggest doubt for the weekend.”

Myrie-Williams, the 19-year-old on loan from Bristol City until the end of the season, picked up the knee problem before the home game against Nottingham Forest on April 12.

Supporters have not forgotten how young prospect Craig Curran burst into the first-team scene at a similar stage of last season’s campaign.

The striker, then 17, scored with his first touch on his home debut against Brighton on Easter Monday 2007, then notched a hat-trick in the final game of the season against Brentford.

Curren’s progress moved along more conventional lines for a teenager this season. His first-team opportunities have been limited to three starts and close to 30 substitute appearances, many of them brief bursts towards the end of games while he learns and adapts to the demands of senior football.

Moore, disappointed that another promotion challenge will fall short following last season’s near miss, says he wants to finish as close to the top six as possible on May 3.

“Finishing seventh I will be gutted but it’s better than finishing ninth,” Moore said.

“I don’t see any reason why we can’t win our last two games. Southend will be coming here thinking they still have a chance of taking an automatic promotion spot. They are four points off second spot so they will have to beat us.

“They will have a go. It won’t be the sort of game for players to sit back because there’s nothing to play for. We will have to be up and at them.”

Moore admitted that had Tranmere secured the play-off spot with two games remaining, his attitude to team selection on Saturday would have been different. “I would probably not be playing four or five of my senior players,” he said.

“I would not see the point of taking the risk with them. But we are in a different position. We want to beat Southend.”

Meanwhile, Tranmere reserves complete their Pontin’s League fixtures with an away game against Accrington Stanley tonight at the Fraser Eagle Stadium (kick-off 7pm).