Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cotterill says he doesn’t know whether he will renew his interest in Town skipper Grant Leadbitter, who TWTD revealed he was targeting when Portsmouth boss in August. Leadbitter is out of contract at the end of the season and having turned down the Blues’ initial offer has told Paul Jewell he is in no hurry to make a decision on his future.

Speaking after his side’s 3-2 victory over the Blues on Saturday, Cotterill was at pains to point out that his interest in both Leadbitter and ex-Town captain David Norris wasn’t leaked by him: “I don’t know how you know [about Pompey’s interest] because when I was at Portsmouth I didn’t make anything public at all.

“There was some interest from Grant when I was at Portsmouth. It wasn’t something that we would have made public or wanted to make public, as was the case with David Norris.

“I don’t tend to do that. I try to do things properly if we can, which I did do, keeping my side of the bargain, so to speak.”

As for any future moves now that he’s at the City Ground, the one-time Wimbledon striker says he’s undecided: “I don’t know whether that interest would be renewed at Nottingham Forest or not because we have a lot of central midfield players at this moment in time.

“It’s horses for courses, so maybe there’s somebody else at another club that we need in a position where we’re a little bit light.”

He says he’s been a fan of Leadbitter’s for a while and was familiar with most of the Town side in action on Saturday: “I’ve been an admirer of Grant for a long time.

“I’ve been an admirer of a lot of players in the Ipswich team. I think they’re a bunch of really good lads. I’ve come across nearly all of them during Championship seasons.

“Carlos Edwards, I’ve come across him before, Collins, Ingimarsson. I didn’t know the young boy Cresswell, who has come in from Tranmere and I think has done very well. He’s done great.

“Obviously I know Jimmy Bullard, I know Grant Leadbitter, the young boy Josh Carson I don’t know, but I think he has a great future. Scotland and Chopra I know very well, and Lee Bowyer. I pretty much knew all their team today.”

From the Town line-up, the former Stoke, Cheltenham and Burnley boss singled two-goalscorer Danny Collins out for praise: “Fantastic. I thought he was a tower of strength for them today. I thought he played very well.

“I just congratulated him outside, I thought he played very well for them today. It’s a pity his loan hadn’t ended a bit earlier or hadn't restarted.”

He says he and his squad worked on counteracting Town’s diamond formation for a number of days last week: “When you know a team is going to play a diamond and you’re going to play 4-4-2 you have to work on it. We started work on it in the early part of the week and did Tuesday, Thursday and Friday on it.

“We started on our front six and incorporated our back four as the week went on. You have to do that against a diamond, it’s really difficult to play against and you have to do that work.

“I thought the work we did allowed players to do what they had to do without thinking about it because actually thinking means you don’t get to the man sometimes. I thought we did that very well today. I was pleased with that. I think the lads did very well with that.”

He says some formations just don’t work against a diamond but remained tight-lipped on what he sees as the key element to thwarting the system: “You could play 4-3-3 against it but I don’t think 4-3-3 against it works because what happens then is that your three midfield players end up marking the point of the diamond, the left and the right of the diamond and your striker ends up marking the base of the diamond.

“Which means that if you’ve got two good footballing centre-halves [playing for the opposition], who marks them? There’s nobody left to mark them because the two full-backs will be running your widemen off.

“But we’ve got diamonds to play against this season, so I don’t want to give too much away! I’d rather keep it to myself.”

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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