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Lucas urges Dale patience

Image: David Lucas: Rochdale's goalkeeper is confident results will start to turn in the club's favour

Rochdale goalkeeper David Lucas is confident that they will soon find their rhythm after a sluggish start to the season.

Keeper confident results will start to turn at Spotland

Rochdale's experienced goalkeeper David Lucas is confident that they will soon find their rhythm after a sluggish start to the season. Dale find themselves in the League One relegation zone on goal difference after just three wins from their opening 16 games. However, with several changes in personnel over the summer, including the arrival of manager Steve Eyre, Lucas believes that there was bound to be a transitional period for the club after last season's success in finishing ninth. "It was always going to be a tough start to the season with a new management team in place and the arrivals and departures of players over the summer," Lucas told skysports.com.

Learning curve

"The club did so well last year and we've put a lot of groundwork in over these past few months and hopefully that will bear fruit sooner rather than later. "The amount of technical work that the gaffer has brought in to training is bound to kick in eventually and at the moment we are on a learning curve. "There's a lot of structure to the training and all the lads have took it on board, but there's bound to be a transitional period and hopefully we are just coming out of that now. "Everyone's ambition at the start of the season is to purely get their first win on the board and then take it from there I think. "Obviously, the big clubs like Sheffield Wednesday are different because they've got a tremendous amount of pressure on them to go and get promoted. "However, a club like Rochdale need to adjust their ambitions as the season progresses and at the minute, whilst we are trying to find the perfect system that suits us, we are just taking it game by game. "I know that it's a cliche, but that's what we are doing at the moment." Dale have been tough to beat in recent weeks, but have found it hard to convert that into wins, with four draws in their last six games and Lucas insists that their recent form brings mixed emotions. He added: "We have drawn a fair few games recently and there are pros and cons to each result because the Colchester game, for example, saw us come back to get a point from two goals down, so you've got to look at that one as a point gained. "However, the reversal is when you are ahead and don't hold on for the three points, so it's a tough one to call in terms of whether the recent draws have been good or bad."

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