Aaron Collins is hungry to add to his goal tally to help push Wanderers into the play-off places after receiving an award in recognition of his recent efforts, writes Pete Oliver.
Collins was named the PFA Fans’ Player of the Month for January in League One after scoring five times last month.
Four of those contributed to wins for the Whites and Wanderers’ top scorer is targeting another productive run as Steven Schumacher’s side tries to close a two-point gap and force its way into the top six.
“It’s always nice to get an award and especially from the fans voting,” said Collins, who received his trophy from PFA representative Dean Furman. “I want to thank them for that. I had a good month in January, so it was nice to be recognised for it as well and to come away with an award is always a pleasure.
“We came out off the back of Christmas after a lot of games and we picked up a good few points. Obviously, we're always going to look at it and think we could have got more, but we're in a position now where it's time to push. We're just stuck in this gap at the moment where you're talking from fifth, sixth to eighth, ninth and all the teams are winning some and losing some.
“We need to get a little bit of run going now through February, try and create a little bit of that gap, get into the top six. Then it's a quarter of the season to go and it's exciting because if you do hit form at this time, and you hit a nice little run going into the last 16 games, it's all to play for.
“The first step is to get into the play-offs. It’s frustrating that we've been in there once this season, but how many times have we seen teams pick up form towards the end of seasons? From January to the end of the season is sometimes the most crucial part and the main aim for us now is to pick up that form, go into the last 16 games and you never know where that could put us.”
Collins - who has also been Wanderers' KIA Player of the Month for three months running - missed the Whites' dramatic 4-3 win over Crawley Town a week ago with a hip injury but returned via the bench in the mid-week Vertu Trophy exit at Wrexham.
That 1-0 defeat means the 27-year-old will be unable to add to his competition-leading six goals in the Trophy, with his sights set on boosting a League One total that stands at eight going into Saturday’s trip to Shrewsbury Town.
“I do want to hit that double-figures and go on,” Collins added. “This year I managed to get a few more goals in the cup competitions. The last three seasons, where I've hit between 15 and 20, a lot of them have been in the league.
“With 16 games to go, now the target is to get to the 15-goal mark and if I can get to that 15-goal mark I can then go right, ‘let's hit that 20 before the end of the season’.
“But we’ve got all our strikers, which could be two up top, could be one up top, could be a front three, and we're all there to score the goals or create the goals and that's what we've got to do now going into the final step.”
Watch Collo’s full pre-match interview on Wanderers TV