Martins: The Back Door Is Open
Vitor Martins On Form:
"Last month was a great one. The boys battled on spectacularly, despite the amount of games we've had to play in such quick succession. These runs of matches can make or break your team and they certainly played in our favour this month.
These long stretches of matches can definitely harm fitness both mentally and physically. If you're not prepared then you aren't going to come out very well. In our situation it's about getting the most out of these long hauls. We are in a place where we cannot fall into a long slide of bad form - it's extremely difficult to get out of it.
But, if it is the other way around, then it can work wonders. There is nothing like being confident and having a long run of great form. That's exactly what we enjoyed this month. Win after win after win - the boys loved it, too. The loss is not something to worry about, it was a tough away game and we will recover, I'm sure of it.
December is shorter, but we have played these teams before. Therefore, we can analyse things and make improvements. A second chance is a blessing for us. We can pick up more points than last time, see where we've gone wrong and make things right again.
We may have to change up our own plan a bit, I don't know. I think some people thought we'd be the easy beats and so we've come out and shocked them a bit. They didn't expect us to be playing so well, taking the chances we've been getting. The win versus Académica summed that up."