United’s captain, Neal Bishop, wants his side to become more ruthless to ensure their status in League One next season.
The club are currently in 17th in the Sky Bet League One table and five points clear of the bottom four with three matches to play.Bishop, who has recently returned from injury, believes a win this Tuesday against Bradford City at Glanford Park will be enough to keep the Iron out of the relegation zone for the remainder of the season.
He said: “I think a win will see us safe. A couple of teams have only got two games left so a win Tuesday and I’m sure we will be safe. It’s a fantastic opportunity against Bradford because in the last couple of home games we have been on the front and we just have to make sure we’re more ruthless.”
“We’ve got two opportunities to ensure survival but we don’t want the second one because we want to do it Tuesday night. Hopefully the supporters will come down and support us, like they have in recent weeks, and it’s a good game because Bradford are a well-supported club and they should bring a few so hopefully it’ll be a good atmosphere.”
Bishop returned from injury on the 11th April, in the 2-1 victory over Crawley, and the central midfielder played the full 90 minutes, as well as starting in the next two games, which all came within a week of the Crawley match. He was substituted after 76 minutes in Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Colchester and he said the reason was because he was feeling the effects of playing so much football in such a short space of time since his injury lay off.
He said: “I was a bit tired Saturday night. It was my first week back and the third game in a week so where I had the operation was quite sensitive and sore which is the reason I got brought off. I’ve had a good recovery and I’m more than ready to go Tuesday night. It was fatigue and after the surgery I had nearly four weeks out so to play three times in a week was a big ask and it had stiffened up but it was nothing more than that, nothing serious, and I’ll be 100% ready to go Tuesday.”
Theo Robinson and Hakeeb Adelakun scored Scunthorpe’s goals on Saturday to earn a point but Bishop believes it was a chance missed for his team to push themselves clear of relegation and one of their rivals further in it.
He reiterated the point that he wants his side to become more ruthless and said that the second half performance at Colchester wasn’t at the standard they wanted it to be at.
He said: “We were disappointed Saturday and rightfully so because we weren’t good enough in the second half. We spoke at half time about being ruthless and we should have relegated them and enjoyed doing it but we didn’t and weren’t at it.”