Coventry City midfielder Steven Jennings marked his return from injury by being sent on as a second half substitute and immediately set about helping to turn things round in City’s favour.
The 27 year old, who signed from Motherwell during the summer when Andy Thorn was still manager, suffered a muscle tear in his hip at Carlisle in September so missed out while three other central midfielders signed by the new manager Mark Robins took their opportunity to secure their places in the team.
Robins signed James Bailey, Franck Moussa and Conor Henderson within a week of taking charge at Coventry which meant that competition for places was suddenly very hot.
Jennings was given his opportunity to impress Robins in the second half last Saturday and he believes he did enough to give Robins a selection dilemma for tonight’s trip to Brentford.
Speaking to the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner, Jennings said, "When you see the manager bring in a couple of players in your position you do wonder a bit, but it happens at every club. Some people think they are being hard done by but you just have to be positive that you are still good enough to play, and I certainly am.
Jennings is not fazed by having competition; he believes it is good for the players and for the manager.
"Competition is a good thing,” he said, “and I believe you should go into a game knowing you have to produce to get in the next game rather than thinking you are first name on the team sheet. So it keeps you on your toes. I think Franck and James have been superb, first class to be honest, so you have to realise that when the team are doing well you just have to bite your tongue.
“I want the team to do well, win games and move up the league and if that means I miss a few games then so be it. I’d like to be in there but the gaffer picks a team to win the game and, apart from Saturday, we have looked fairly decent to be honest."
As a spectator for about an hour, Jennings thought it was an even game that could have gone either way, but thought County’s opening goal was a soft one to concede.
He said, “The first half could have gone either way. We had a couple of chances and so did they and it’s all about putting your chances away. If you look at the stats in this league, whoever seems to take the lead seems to go on to win the game or get something out of it, so we have got to put our chances away. We were doing that in the previous few games but it wasn’t to be on Saturday."
Jennings was unimpressed by the first goal Notts County scored. He explained, "I don’t know if Joe Murphy saw it because if he did I think he’d have saved it. Their player had a lot of time and we have been working on pressing the ball all week so for them to get a shot with so much space is a bit disappointing, but people get dragged out of position.
"When teams are 1-0 up they tend to sit back a little bit and say, ‘come and break us down,’ because when you take the lead you usually fancy your chances at defending it because you defend in training every single day and train to hold a lead."
Jennings was reasonably pleased with his own performance and said, "I thought we got a foothold in the game a bit when I went on, so I feel I did reasonably OK and like to think the gaffer will look at it.
"I’ve never really had injuries and now I am getting loads of niggly ones at once which is disappointing because I am a lad who needs to be playing every Saturday just to keep my whole life going. You train all week to play on a Saturday so it’s important that when I get asked to go on that I do the best I can.
"There is good competition throughout the team. We had two strikers on the bench who are champing to get on themselves but all credit to Callum Ball and David McGoldrick, who has been fantastic since he came here. He’s been the standout player and scored his goals, so the lads on the bench are just biding their time and waiting for their chance."