Hill remains upbeat

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Keith Hill

Manager Keith Hill has been reflecting on the week as his side get ready to face York City at Bootham Crescent on Saturday.

Dale will be without central defenders Olly Lancashire and Jack O’Connell following their red cards in Tuesday night’s defeat at home to Scunthorpe United.

And although the pair will being missing for the trip to Bootham Crescent, Hill remains in an upbeat and positive mood. He said: “It represents an opportunity for the squad. I trust the squad, I believe in the squad and we’ve tried to nurture the squad for situations like this.

“Football can be cruel at times and what happened the other night was exceptionally cruel. It wasn’t a fair reflection of what we’re capable of achieving and I do believe the opposition got away with going on to win as comfortably as they did.

“I feel as though we’ve been victimised but without being victims because we’ll never act like victims. We’ll always dust ourselves down and continue into the rest of the season.

“I’m really happy with respect to where we are at this point in the season. I’m really happy because at the beginning of the season I thought we were strong enough to invade the top seven and for the last two months we’ve been there.

“I remember the adulation and the euphoria surrounding the football club when we beat Bury at home. When we did that we rose to 12th or 13th in the league, so we’ve got to remember how far we’ve come over such a short period of time.

“When I first came [back] to this football club we had 18 games to play and we focused in on retaining our league status, and we did that. We’re building and we can’t tear things down. It’s a modern trend to rip things up and start again but I don’t see any reason to do that. I believe we’re building, I believe there’s a value in what we’re trying to achieve and hopefully we’ll get to where we need to be.

“When you look at where we are and how far we’ve come then we’ve got a lot to be thankful for and a lot to be proud of.

"We’ll take what we’ve previously achieved this season into the remainder of the season, especially over the course of December. It’s a big month for us and it’s a difficult period of the season for football teams in any league. It’s important that we really give everything that we’ve got with respect to trying to get as many points as we can and possibly progress in the FA Cup.”