Boro’s boss says Forest game was a ‘big eye opener’

Teddy Sheringham says the defeat to Nottingham Forest was a ‘big eye opener’ for him.

The Stevenage manager watched on as his side lost 3-0 at home to Dougie Freedman’s men on Friday evening thanks to goals from Matthew Mills, Henri Lansbury and Jack Hobbs.

Boro now go to Spain for a pre-season training camp, but ahead of that trip Sheringham said that there were things from the Forest defeat that his side will have to improve on but added that he was happy to see some players play for more than an hour.

“We’ve had some early pre-season tests for us which were perfect for what I wanted. This was a stiffer test and a big eye opener for me, for the players,” Sheringham said.

“Whether we’ll come up against a team as good as that in Division Two is a different matter.

“[There were] a lot of little technical things we can take out of that as in we’re playing too deep from the back. I think they realised we were going to be trying to do that and they pressed on that in the first 15 minutes and put us under pressure.

“We got a lot of positives out of [the game]. We stepped up from 45 minutes on Saturday. We’ve gone up to 65-70 minutes [against Forest] and that’s exactly what I wanted whether we was winning or losing, whether the game was close.

“I wanted to make sure that everybody stepped up their training and pre-season preparation and the fact that we’re going to 75 minutes now. We’re getting closer to the start of the season and that’s all that matters.”

Sheringham also cast his eye over Shaun Miller, the former Sheffield United and Coventry City striker who forced one save out of Dorus De Vries during his substitute appearance.

“I’d like to have another look at Shaun. Again it was a tough game. He only got half an hour up there,” Sheringham said.

“I’m trying to look after my game as well as trialists, but he’s probably the one who is more likely to be signing more than anyone else. He’s a seasoned pro who knows what he’s doing.”

Speaking about the camp in Seville, the Boro boss added: “It a training camp that we’re going to. We’ll be training twice a day like we have been doing here most of the time.

“I’ll try and taper it so we work hard at the start of the week and then we get ready for our games and slow it down so that we are still ready to perform on the match day and we’ll be doing that again.

“We’ve got a game out there, again it’s a game to get our stamina going; our pre-season preparation is still ongoing.”