Glenn: Turn Performance Into Points

Glenn Roeder says it is about time his side turned performances into points in order to move up the table.

The Bolton game, he feels, was typical of a pattern that has been emerging of late in that the team has got less than it deserved by way of reward for good play.

"We are playing well enough to win and that is the frustrating thing," he says.

"No one will change my mind that the performances in the last six or seven weeks should have yielded a lot more points.

"They were better than last year when we were winning - and it is difficult to put your finger on why, this time around, those performances have led to a couple of draws and a few defeats at home.

"It is absolutely mystifying, but we can only go to the next game and the boys are remaining very positive and confident that against Fulham we can get that elusive win."

He is understandably irritated by the focus being on the statistic that the bottom team at Christmas always goes down - as far as the Premiership is concerned - and says:

"I'm bored with that - it is such an easy question; I have been asked about it for the last two weeks and I have said for the last two weeks it is our motivation to prove people wrong."

It is, indeed, something of a dubious statistic since it only relates to the decade-old Premiership in its current form.

But in the old first division, two years before the Premiership came into being, Sheffield United had seven points from one win - that having only come on the Saturday before Christmas - and four draws.

But, thanks largely to the goals of Brian Deane, they lost only six of their final 21 games and put together a run of seven straight wins between January and March.

They finished in 13th place.

There is some good news on the injury front - Ian Pearce is not as badly injured as at first feared, and Glenn reveals:

"Pearcey has got a very badly bruised toe and thankfully it is not fractured.

"Don needs to get on the field, and Saturday did his confidence the world of good.

"I am sure he will be involved again on Boxing Day - as will Fredi this time around."

Looking back on Saturday's draw, he adds:

"I thought we had it in the bag; we had a great chance that we should have taken against Bolton.

"We got the lead which is all we could ask for but didn't take our chances to build on that lead, and in fact could have been a couple in front before we actually scored.

"We started the game very well; in the first 20 minutes we went for them, and it was one way traffic.

"We got one goal and couldn't get the second - and it was galling to lose the equaliser in the manner that we did.

"It was a messy one, to say the least, and the final straw was Trevor's opportunity virtually in injury time - which you would have said 99 times out of 100 he would have put away.

"It was disappointing, from a set play - they had thrown so many balls into our box all afternoon at every opportunity with long balls, straight free kicks, wide free kicks, and we dealt with every one except for one which ended up in the back of the net."