United travel to Fleetwood on Boxing Day and boss Paul Simpson admitted improvements will be needed after Saturday’s disappointing defeat against Cheltenham.
“They’re all big games but let’s be honest, if we perform like we did against Cheltenham then it doesn’t matter who we play, we’re not going to get anything,” he said.
“We need to massively improve. The disappointing thing, was they all seemed to have a spring in their step after the Northampton game. To then perform like we did against Cheltenham is hugely disappointing. We’re going to have to have a long serious look at ourselves.
“The players will get Christmas Day off, the plan has always been to give them a day with their families. I’ve been at clubs where you get them in and you’re completely wasting your time. They’ll have work to do at home. The truth is, on a second recovery day which is what Christmas Day will be, they do very little anyway.
“We were in on Christmas Eve to check how everybody was and we prepared as we were always going to. They’ll do what’s expected at home, they have to log it on a fitness app, and we get it so we can see whether they’ve done it.
“I’ve got no doubts about them as professionals, no doubt they’ll be doing it. This is about recovering, and about improving our level of performance from the Cheltenham game.
“We won’t get a lot of time to do any work on the training pitch, but we did some really good work on the training pitch last week, and the week before. The fact we’re not going to get any time, I don’t think that will make any difference.
“Everybody knew in terms of players and staff that Cheltenham wasn’t good enough and we need to improve. I find it hard to believe we can be as poor as that in our next game, but the challenge is to make sure we’re not.”
After Taylor Charters and Owen Moxon returned to the squad on Saturday, the manager provided an update on the players who have been missing in recent weeks.
“Paul Huntington is going through that little bit of a phase where he’s getting little niggles, maybe it’s the stage of his career, I don’t know, but he’s got a little niggle after a really light training session on Friday. I’d spoken to him before training and said he wasn’t going to be involved in the game on Saturday, but he’s got a little niggle, we’re hoping it will clear up but that’s doubtful for Fleetwood.
“Mox is probably going to be ok to start if needed, I don’t know how he feels after the game today.
“Getting Jack Ellis, Taylor Charters back is good. We’ve got lads on the bench like Ryan Edmondson who’s coming on and showing he can run around, we’re not getting hold of the ball off him. We’ve got Sean Maguire and Dan Butterworth who are wanting to be involved.
“We have got a few options that maybe we might need to rotate it a little bit. But whoever’s selected I think we all just have to hold our hands up and say we have to be better than we’ve shown today.”
And the Blues will be backed by a sold out away end on the Fylde Coast.
“We’ve said everything about the fans and how they are a lot, so a sold out away end doesn’t surprise me,” he admitted. “I really hope that we can’t be as bad as we were on Saturday.
“We have to turn up, we have to play. I’m disappointed with how poor we’ve been over this first part of the season, but I expected it to be a slog for us. The fans have stuck with us and we massively appreciate that.
“We need to go and increase our level of performance and make sure we’re a damn sight better than we were on Saturday, otherwise we’re going to be in for another disappointing afternoon.”