Na­tion­al coach An­gus Eve is feel­ing no re­al pres­sure ahead of to­mor­row's CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup qual­i­fi­er against Montser­rat, but he has been work­ing on a few key ar­eas that would, not on­ly get the de­sired re­sult but will en­sure a good per­for­mance.

The for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er told the me­dia at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence from the team base at the Em­bassy Suites ho­tel in Flori­da, USA on Wednes­day that: "I don't know what pres­sure the team is un­der be­cause they just missed out on qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup, so this is ac­tu­al­ly a re­build­ing stage. We have had to pick the play­ers up men­tal­ly and get them to think re­fresh again. And then get them to per­form at a par­tic­u­lar lev­el. So it's al­most like a com­put­er, they're re­boot­ing. I think once the play­ers go and they per­form, they put the work in and we can see a dif­fer­ence in the at­ti­tude of the guys, I think, in this short space of time, these are the things that we're look­ing for. Of course, we want a re­sult, we're play­ing for a re­sult. We want to win both games and qual­i­fy for the group stage," Eve ex­plained.

De­spite not hav­ing a planned warm-up match on Mon­day due to un­safe COVID-19 con­di­tions, a high­ly in­tense scrim­mage among all the play­ers, both over­seas-based pro­fes­sion­als and the lo­cal play­ers, helped him in se­lect­ing the 23-man team for the match, which came from the 26-man ros­ter he took to the Unit­ed States, ba­si­cal­ly just leav­ing out mid­field­ers Mo­lik Khan and Michel Poon-Angeron.

Eve, a for­mer Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary School stand­out said that while the prepa­ra­tion may not have been ide­al, he is ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent in the work put in with his play­ers so far. 'Gus' as he is nor­mal­ly called, has been for­mal­is­ing a sys­tem of play, amid a few con­cerns he has had, in­clu­sive of a search for a num­ber#9 play­er: "We have been work­ing with the T&T based guys, we had a mi­ni-camp which you know, and then we came up here and we were still work­ing on the sys­tems. The play­ers who were brought in would have been to com­pli­ment the po­si­tions I know that they can play, what they can bring to the team when they do come in, there­by mak­ing the process more seam­less."

With Ryan Telfer, the Atleti­co Ot­tawa play­er the lone recog­nised tar­get man for T&T, Eve be­lieves on­ly time will tell if he has found his num­ber #9 play­er: "We have Mar­cus Joseph and Isa­iah Lee, a young man with a lot of po­ten­tial in the num­ber #9 po­si­tion. We al­so have, as I said Mar­cus 'Lobo' Joseph. Mar­cus has a great deal of ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing abroad and do­ing well in the lo­cal leagues. He hasn't had a prop­er run out at the se­nior lev­el, so we're hop­ing he can come good be­cause that is a prob­lem area. We al­so have Ryan Telfer who can play a num­ber #9 al­so- and we have a cou­ple of oth­er stuff that we're work­ing on al­so."

On Tues­day de­fen­sive mid­field­er Khaleem Hy­land was con­firmed as the cap­tain and Kevin Moli­no the vice-cap­tain, but the team will be with­out in­stru­men­tal mid­field­er Jo­evin Jones who was in­jured dur­ing an MLS match last week­end, while Levi Gar­cia is not avail­able. The com­bi­na­tion of Jones and Gar­cia has been used to telling ef­fect, and their ab­sence has left Eve hop­ing that oth­er play­ers will step up and grasp at the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

T&T plays Montser­rat to­mor­row in a Gold Cup Tour­na­ment qual­i­fi­er at the DRV PNK Sta­di­um in Flori­da, USA.