We were able to confirm that Stockport defender Ben Barclay had extended his loan stay with the club for the play-off campaign last week, with the versatile player available to feature, if selected, for the semi-final fixtures against Bradford.
But manager Paul Simpson revealed at his Saturday press conference that reaching a deal hadn’t all been plain sailing when we suggested that it had never been in doubt.
“It was in doubt, don’t worry about that,” he told us. “There was a possibility it was going to be too much for us, but thankfully the directors and Nigel have agreed to it and allowed us to keep him.
“Stockport did a deal in a way with us, so we got it over the line. I’m delighted he’s with us, it’s an important one for us.
“We know if we make it through this stage, and Stockport make it through, then he can’t play in the final which is a blow for him, and for everybody.
“I know there’s a determination from him that regardless of what comes next, he wants to play a big part in helping us to get there.
“There were no issues with any of the other loan players, they’d all been agreed by the clubs weeks ago.
“We’ve got Jack Robinson, Alfie McCalmont, JK’s ok to play, but is suspended for this first leg. The rest of them are all fit and raring to go and looking forward to a brilliant challenge.”
And it’s a challenge that’s to be played out on the type of stage not many of our players have experienced before.
“It’s like cup semi-finals, with it being a league format that goes into a cup competition,” he said. “It’s now on who can perform the best over two legs.
“I genuinely don’t believe that it’s won or lost on Sunday, but we can certainly give ourselves a great opportunity to win this by going about it in the right way in the first game.
“We’re going to go there to be positive, we’re going to take the game to Bradford and hopefully be able to come out on top to give us a little bit of a leg-up for the second one.
“It’s not so much about who handles the occasion better, it’s about who handles the game. We have to forget the occasion, we have to go and play the game of football, because that’s all that matters.
“We know there’s going to be a big crowd, we know it’s going to be a brilliant atmosphere made up by two sets of proper football fans, real, genuine fans. We’re taking just under 2,500 and they will sell out of their availability, so it’s proper football fans who will make it a good evening.
“We have to do everything to make it a good game of football, but the most important thing is that it leads to a positive result for us.”
“We’ve said it before, but we’ve earned the right to be here now,” he continued. “These are now two very evenly matched sides with almost identical records. We’ve also got similar records from the last five games of the season, neither of us have been outstanding if we’re going to be honest.
“We had five goals more than them over the 46 games, and that’s probably the only thing that separates the two of us, and the only thing that’s given us the opportunity to be at home for the second leg.
“Now we’ve done those 46 games we can get rid of the nervousness and the little bit of pressure that we’ve built up on ourselves leading into the end of the season because, again being honest, there was a little bit of tension.
“Everybody was a little bit concerned that we weren’t going to get over the line, so now that’s been put to bed we’re in a really good position. We have two great games to look forward to and hopefully give ourselves an opportunity for an even better third one.”
But can those new to this type of occasion be helped by those who have, or by adopting a different method of approaching the game?”
“We can only prepare in the same we always do,” he commented. We don’t do anything differently and really, it is just the next game. We’ve been to Valley Parade recently so we know what to expect.
“I think there was over 17,000 there when we went last time, so it’s not that we’re going into an environment that we’ve no idea what it’s about. We know exactly what it’s about, we know what Bradford City are about in terms of their individuals.
“On the day, Mark could do something completely different and surprise us, but I’m not expecting that. It’s about just going and playing a game of football. Once you get out on the pitch, although there’s probably going to be more noise than we’re used to, it’s still the same. It’s two teams playing each other and we have to make sure we keep it to 11 on our side and go and give it our best shot.”
But as we’ve seen as a club over the course of the last week, there’s an increase in interest levels about what the club is up to on every area.
“I think that’s the difficulty,” he agreed. “There does become more attention on you. We have to make sure we all keep focusing on the game.
“Over the week we’ve just tried to talk about how we’re going to go about this game on Sunday. Not even looking at the next game, it’s just about this one, making sure we’re right.
“We did some work yesterday [Friday], we’ve done our final bits of preparation today [Saturday], everybody knows what we’re expecting, what we want from them.
“Once that game starts, all the periphery stuff is just the noise – noise from the crowd, whether it be positive or negative noise, and we’ve just got to focus on the game and have a bit of tunnel vision that we just focus on a game of football.”