The Easter weekend throws up the opportunity for teams to open or close gaps, cement positions and change fortunes, and for United it’s six points up for grabs that could well be very valuable in the quest to get safety over the line.
“We head into next weekend knowing that the points could make the difference,” manager Paul Simpson said. “People talk about a carrot and stick to motivate you, that’s a carrot, not a stick.
“We have to make sure we think of it as a carrot, not as a bit of a burden we struggle with. We’ve given ourselves a really good chance, a great chance in fact, and we have to go and do it.
“I want five really, really positive performances that hopefully will lead to many good results out of those five.
“We’ve got a week to get ready for the Friday game, but it’s up to us and to the players to go and recover properly. It’s up to us as staff to analyse it and get a group together to start against Walsall, but also have half an eye on the next one on the Monday.
“It’s a case of just picking them up, and listen, we didn’t go in there at full time on Saturday and go mad because I didn’t really know where to start. We were very poor, they know we were very poor, so we have to learn from it and make sure we get ready properly for the next game.
“And playing two games in quick succession like this is intense. I’m not going to complain about it, everybody used to say to me what a drag that is, playing games over Christmas or this, no it isn’t a drag.
“It’s a drag when you’re out of work and not involved in it, or it’s a drag when you’re not involved in professional football. So having to play at Easter, we’ve got to make sure we’re right.
“We’ve got two really important games followed by three more after it. We have to be right, it’s as simple as that. I would imagine we’ll have some good numbers travelling to Walsall.
“I would like to think if we get a good result there we’ll have some good numbers here on Monday to watch us against a team competing at the top in Mansfield.
“I keep using the term, we have a duty of care to do it properly. That’s what we’ll be working hard to achieve.”