Town boss Paul Cook has revealed he has apologised to striker Joe Pigott for his lack of involvement this season and expects the summer signing from AFC Wimbledon to start this evening’s Papa John’s Trophy tie at home to Colchester in which he reiterated that he will field a changed but still first-team side.
Pigott joined the Blues on a free transfer in the close season after leaving the Dons but with Macauley Bonne having made a very strong start to the campaign, scoring 11 times, the 27-year-old has been on the periphery.
So far, the Maidstone-born frontman has scored three times in five starts and four sub appearances.
"I apologised to Joe Pigott over the weekend for the lack of minutes that he’s had,” Cook said at last night’s fans’ forum.
"One of the things that as a staff we debate is that it’s very difficult to take Macauley Bonne off a pitch, it’s very difficult.
"If you look even on Saturday, Chaplin comes on, Sone Aluko comes on, who have scored goals, we’re always bringing on goalscorers on in general.
"I 100 per cent agree with you, Joe Pigott should possibly have had more minutes, but if you look at Chaplin, who has gone in as a 10 and has got five quickly, Celina’s gone in as a 10 and has got goals quickly, Aluko’s gone in and got goals quickly.
"There’s only Kyle Edwards now that we’re looking at and obviously working with Kyle on getting that assist and goal-rate up because the front four of the team has to score goals.
"I agree 100 per cent with you, Joe Pigott especially should have had more minutes and hopefully he’s going to start on Tuesday night and hopefully we can see a little bit more of Joe.”
Regarding this evening’s team, Cook added: "The team and the subs bench will be made up of all first-team players. It’s a very strong starting XI, there will be changes obviously from Saturday but then the subs’ bench will be all first-team players again.
"I do think winning becomes a habit and getting to Wembley would be a fantastic occasion for everybody, so why can’t we give it a good go on Tuesday night?”
Cook was also asked about his coaching staff and revealed something of how things work on the training field and also on Town’s defensive frustrations.
"Francis Jeffers does all the defensive set pieces, Gary Roberts does all the attacking set pieces and I do all the team play, so everything’s on me with the team play,” he said.
"One of the things that I’ve found is that in games in general, we can defend. We just have lapses in concentration.
"We’ve defended in games really, really well but we come under great pressure in a lot of games. We have quite a lot of control of most games and what we’ve got to make sure we do is that we pay full attention for 94, 95 whatever minutes it is.
"The attention to detail nowadays in football, every team knows literally everything that the opposition will do.
"When we take the pitch against Oxford on Saturday we’ll know exactly their formation, we’ll have studied how they play, their key players. All our players get all the clips of the opposing player.
"For example, even on Saturday, Christian Walton would have seen clips of Oldham’s penalty taker [Dylan Bahamboula] and it was quite funny because when their guys came in after the game they went ‘He keeps putting them in the same place!’. Thank God for that! That’s how much detail goes into football now.”
Cook also outlined why Town’s home match against Crewe Alexandra is being played on Sunday 28th November rather than the previous day.
"I think it was to give us more time to recover from the Tuesday night game,” he said. "I think it was just an option we took up, if I’m not mistaken, I think after Crewe on the Sunday, there’ll be no game until the Saturday.
"It was just something that we thought might be a little bit different, it gives us a little bit of extra recovery. Maybe just something a little bit different possibly for our supporters as well.”