Manager Graham Alexander has been looking ahead to the home game against Peterborough United on Saturday afternoon.
He believes his side have been playing to a high standard in the last couple of games and reckons they will soon return to winning ways.
Speaking to iFollow Iron, Alexander previewed the home game and provided us with team news.
ON FRESH INJURIES…
GA: I think everyone got through the game relatively unscathed. There are a few tired bodies with having games in quick succession. What the lads put into the game was brilliant effort and commitment. They are fit guys and will recover well. They do the right things on their days off, so I expect them to be in good shape come Saturday morning.
ON TOM HOPPER…
GA: We had a little fitness test with him on Tuesday afternoon just to make sure he was alright. He didn’t really train with us on Monday, so he hadn’t really tested it. He said he felt fine and good enough to go on the bench, so that was good and he had a proper day of training on Thursday. He will come into contention for Saturday.
ON ANDREW CROFTS AND CONOR TOWNSEND…
GA: They’re both not training yet, unfortunately. I don’t think Croftsy will be too long. I think Conor will be another a week at least. We will see how they progress, it can change daily with those sorts of things. We will keep in close contact with Chris Burton (Head of Medical and Sports Science) and hopefully we can get as many players available as possible because we need everybody. We need more than the eleven that start. The more players, the better it is for competition and depth.
ON SAM MANTOM…
GA: He’s gone to see the specialist he went to see at the end of last year. It went quite well and they will be giving him another scan today, just to look at something else. The original fears are okay, so it’s not got worse than where he was last time, but there’s something there that’s niggling him. Hopefully we will get a positive result from the scan. If we do, then he shouldn’t be out for too long. If we don’t, then we don’t know what the next course of action is just yet, so we will just wait for the results.
ON LUKE WILLIAMS AND JONATHON MARGETTS…
GA: It’s as it was for them. They’re still quite a while away from full fitness.
ON THE PETERBOROUGH UNITED CLASH…
GA: They can play in many different ways. They change their formation quite often with the personnel, so they are quite adaptable. They’ve got a very good squad so we will expect a tough challenge as we do with every other game. We just need to build on our last two performances, which I feel have been good enough to take points from those games. I thought one point was not enough for our performance the other day. We should have taken something from the Rotherham game as well. At the moment, we’re just under what we would have been expected to take from the games with those sorts of performances and with the chances we created. We have to keep trying to improve and put in a performance that can win us the game. It’s important that you get the building blocks in place. That’s what we will continue to work on. We have done a lot in the last ten days with us having no midweek last week, we have to do that in any way we can. I’ve been really pleased with the players’ last two games because against Wigan, we didn’t perform to the level we expect from us. The last two games we certainly have and we’re just waiting for the break to make sure we can take the points.
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