United’s steady run of fixtures continues tonight with the trip to Grimsby for the rearranged meeting between the clubs following the abandonment suffered on attempt number one last month, when heavy rain put the mockers on our Saturday afternoon in Cleethorpes.
“It’s huge, a huge game,” manager Paul Simpson said. “It’s a game where we didn’t do particularly well in the short period we were there last time.
“We’ve got to go there and be better than we were both then and on Saturday. It’s a really good opportunity as far as I’m concerned.
“They’ve lost at home at the weekend and they’ll be under a bit of pressure to get a result. We’ve got to go there and, as I say, be better than we were in the first half at Newport. If we do that I think we’ve got enough to get a result.”
“It’s another tough away game and we’ve got to be right for it,” he added. “When I say right, we have to be better and up to the standard we know we can be.
“I told the players at the end of the game on Saturday, in front of our supporters, that if they want to do well they have to go to places like that and Grimsby and be better.
“We have to start properly and hopefully that’s what we’re going to go and do. The standards the players have shown since we came back towards the end of June have certainly suggested that we can be better.
“I don’t really know what happens when we get a first half like that, that’s the honest answer. We can use all the old English excuses of loads of games and travelling, but it doesn’t really wash with me.
“Sometimes you get it, you get loads of energy. The Fleetwood game the other night we had unbelievable numbers in terms of distances, and high intensity running and sprinting.
“I keep talking about being front footed, look forward, run forward, we’re not our best when we sit back. Look, if we want to be up there, at the top end, we’ve got a great opportunity to go and get three points when nobody else is playing.
“It’s a game we’ve got to catch up, our game in hand, so we have to do it properly. We’re going to a place where they’re struggling to get a win at home, and we have to go and grab it by the scruff of the next and strangle it as much as we can.
“We know we have character, I’m told last year when we weren’t playing well we’d have lost a game where we went behind. It’s good to see the character and personality we talk about.
“Those things will get you so far but then you have to have ability to take it to the next step. If we added ability to the personality and character at the weekend, we’d more than likely have ended up with three points in the bag.
“It’s time for us to start doing that.”