Crewe are the visitors to Brunton Park this weekend and manager Paul Simpson spoke about what he expects will be another tough encounter, with one of last season’s relegated teams looking to get themselves going following an up and down start.
“They’re hard to beat, but every game in this division is tough,” he said. “We’ve got two players coming back in Kelvin Mellor and Rod McDonald who served the club really well.
“We have to do everything we can to make sure they don’t have a good day. I don’t want them to come and have an enjoyable afternoon.
“I hope they get a good reception, but I hope they’re going home disappointed, because we have to do what we do. It always has to be about what we do.
“This weekend for me is about a mentality and desire to make sure that we don’t throw away the good work that’s happened in these last two games. There’s no point looking at full-time and talking about it being after the Lord Mayor’s Show.
“I hate that. We get a big result on the road then we come back home and let everybody down. We can’t afford to do that if we want to achieve anything. Whatever that ‘anything’ is, we have to cement our place by winning this weekend, it's as simple as that.”
Highlighted on Tuesday night was the importance of getting the first goal.
“It’s the same at every level, the first goal is always massive,” he told us. “When you go up against a team like Grimsby, who have struggled to get results at home, if you get that first goal it can give you a real platform.
“It makes them open up, because they suddenly have to chase the game. We saw against Newport, with them going ahead, just how much a team can kill a game.
“Grimsby couldn’t do that because we were the ones who were ahead. Maybe that’s what opened it up a little bit for our second goal, and if we’d kept the ball better after the break I think we’d have got even more chances.
“That’s something we must do better against Crewe. We have to start right, keep the ball and use it better, and make sure we go into it with the right mentality. Hopefully that will give us another good performance.”
And with crowd figures up on last season, he’s hoping for another good crowd on Saturday.
“We want to keep them with us,” he commented. “The truth is that the only way to do that is to win games. That’s what supporters want to see.
“We’ve got ourselves into a good position so hopefully come this weekend we’ll see as many as we can possibly get in at Brunton Park, because that’s what we need.
“We want it to be a good place for our players to play, and hopefully we can entertain everybody and keep them all coming back.”
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