kutrieb

Preparation and workrate key for Kutrieb in first win

Dennis Kutrieb presided over Fleet’s first opening-day win since 2016 and while he went home a happy man, he insisted it was back to work in preparation for Matchday Two. View interview below.

“If anybody asked me before the game if we’re happy with a 3-0 win, I would agree, every time,” the Fleet boss told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster. “So I’m very happy that we get the win in the first game, happy for today and tomorrow we start with the hard work for the next game on Saturday.

“We worked in the pre-season so hard for every situation. And as I said many times before, we have to be prepared for every opponent. We saw them two times and as you can see, we were really well prepared for them. Our squad today, especially the first 11 played a really good game.”

Added to preparation was workrate and Kutrieb was delighted with the response his players gave him on a wet autumnal evening in Essex.

“That [workrate] is the basic and that was a problem on Saturday because I think some of our boys thought they can go with 60% or 70%, that’s not enough. It’s not enough for us, not enough for every team in the world. You hear it from every manager. When a team only gives 70% it’s never enough and I think that today was much better.

“They gave 100% for 90 minutes, and I’m happy with it. When you want to win games you have to give 100%. But the boys are very humble and they were not happy on Saturday that we had to win it in a penalty shootout. I’m happy with the character and the attitude.

“If our first game and if everything’s perfect then I think that would be a small problem. We need things we can work on and of course today we we were unhappy and unlucky with [some of] the finishing. We can score more goals but to be honest, I’m very happy that we scored three goals in the second half, so I can’t say anything bad at the moment.”

Fleet’s pre-season preparation was key to hitting the ground running, with the staff carefully managing and planning the performance ahead of the kick-off.

“We did [control the game] but that was the plan,” said Kutrieb. “We have good players, they are fit for 90 minutes, so they have to control the game.

“It’s not by accident – sometimes we will score three goals. One time we will score more, and some games perhaps we will score zero goals. That’s football and I’m happy for today that we scored three. We could score more but I don’t want to talk about that because it’s not our nature to talk about things which didn’t happen. We have to stay humble, we’ve only played one game. But to be fair, it’s one game and one win and that’s brilliant.”

Fleet’s win was concluded with a squad-staff huddle that Kutrieb has brought over from his successful time at TeBe Berlin.

“As I said in the beginning, when I got over here, I think you only can be successful for a whole season when you stay tight together as a team,” he said. “And the biggest thing you can do in one game is to score goals, and the next biggest thing for the bigger picture is to win games.

“When you win games, you have to celebrate it because we have so many things to do, we are so busy every day, we want to create, we want to get better, we want to do it. That’s the best thing you can achieve as a team in one game, and in my opinion you have to celebrate it.”

One player who might have found the celebrating on the sore side was defender Charlie Rowan who withdrew at half-time with an injury.

“We have to send him to hospital, his nose is not the best at the moment,” said the manager. “But I wish him all the best because he did very well in his first game for us. Hopefully it’s not too bad.

Looking ahead to Saturday, Kutrieb added: “Dulwich is a different game to Braintree today I think. We have to do a lot of work for Saturday, we want to get the first home win. But as I said before, we will be prepared for every game and we will be prepared for Dulwich as well. But it will be a tough game for us.”

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