THE win at Millwall lifted everyone’s spirits and means we head into Saturday’s game with Scunthorpe on the front foot.

If I’m being honest about it now, I would have to say last week was the worst I have had since coming to Southend United.

We were very poor in losing to Shrewsbury and we called everyone in on the Sunday to talk about what went wrong.

After that, the under-21s were beaten 6-0 at Exeter before we picked up a number of injuries with John White, Ben Coker and Noel Hunt all being forced out along with Stephen McLaughlin who suffered an illness.

It was all very disappointing but the display at Millwall and, more importantly, the result saw everyone go through the roof.

It was very uplifting and I really thought we showed a lot of bottle going there.

We now need to take that into the Scunthorpe game in order for us to pick up another good result.

For that to happen I think we need to relax and to also remain really patient.

When you’re playing away from home there’s no real expectation to entertain or perform, you just need to get the result.

I think we’ve seen that with sides coming to Roots Hall so far this season and we need to be able to combat that.

LUKE O'NEILL AND LUKE PROSSER BOTH IMPRESSED

THE injuries we suffered led to a few changes being made at the weekend but those who came in at Millwall did really well.

I thought Luke O’Neill was fantastic at right-back while both Cian Bolger and Luke Prosser were different class as well.

We went for Michael Timlin as captain and he’s part of a group of players I describe as my ‘war cabinet’.

John White, Adam Barrett, Noel Hunt and Daniel Bentley are also part of it so that all areas of the pitch are covered.

Daniel might be quite young but he has opinions that are certainly worth listening to.

Character wise, he’s very similar to Kevin Nolan who I worked with at Bolton.

We used to talk and listen to him from the age of 18 and Daniel is the same.

It’s always good to have that and it certainly forms a closer bond with the management team.

HOPING BEN COKER TRAINS TODAY

WE’RE hopeful that Ben Coker will be back in training with us today.

Ben, who has been suffering with a hamstring problem, joined in with the warm up on Tuesday and hopefully he will train properly today.

But we’re holding judgement on John White, Adam Barrett and Noel Hunt at this stage and Stephen McLaughlin is still getting over the illness he’s had as well.

DIEGO COSTA WENT TOO FAR THIS TIME

DIEGO Costa took centre stage last weekend for his antics for Chelsea during their victory against Arsenal.

It was interesting listening to all the varying pundits, especially Alan Shearer.

In terms of physicality and goalscoring I think Alan is probably the closest you can get to Costa.

I don’t normally find myself agreeing with Alan if I’m honest, but I did this weekend when he said Costa over-stepped the mark.

I’m a big fan of Costa normally and I understand the need to play on the edge.

But he did go too far against Arsenal and you certainly can’t get away with that these days.

It’s a world away from when I was playing and the stark differences were shown by an incident I recently witnessed while watching Tottenham Hotspur’s under-21 team.

One of their players put his hand up during the game and it was stopped for 10 minutes because it turned out he had a dislocated finger.

I was sat next to Mick Harford at the time and I couldn’t repeat what he said.

But he did show me his hands, which were quite damaged, and said he would just put his fingers back in himself whenever they popped out, normally after a scrap with a centre-back.

However, those days have long gone and nowadays it’s all about law suits and insurance policies so it’s all completely different.