Wanderers Head Coach Steven Schumacher expects a “good test” when the Whites visit St James Park for a Sky Bet League One fixture away at Exeter City on Saturday afternoon.
Aiming to return to winning ways after three consecutive draws, third-placed Wanderers will come up against a Grecians outfit who are under the interim management of Dan Green following Gary Caldwell’s recent departure.
Previewing the contest in Devon, Schumacher is looking forward to the challenge.
Schumacher told Wanderers TV: “They have impressed me loads, I’ve watched them a lot since we played them last time in December, they done really well and it feels as though they are in a good rhythm, they are a team playing with confidence and they have got good players, they’ve got lads who are good footballers who can hurt you if you are not ready for them.
“It will be a good test for us, but I think they will be aware of the threats we have got as well, so we’re looking forward to the challenge.
“They will be disappointed to lose Gary (Caldwell) and Dan (Green) has gone in there and the players over the last two games have played in a similar way, they’ve scored goals and they were really dangerous last week at Peterborough and equalised late on against Wycombe in the other game, so it’s not been too much of a change from what Gary was doing.
“We know what to expect, we know it will be a big challenge for us but we also know that we can hurt them if we play as well as we can play.
“We’ve had a good training week, we’ve had no midweek game this week, so we’ve had loads of time to prepare and get ready for it, we’ve got a long journey down there which is fine, we’re used to doing them, but we are looking forward to the game, it will be a decent game of football, two good footballing teams and may the best team win.”
Wanderers are unbeaten in their last nine fixtures with 12 games remaining, and Schumacher says his players must only focus on themselves going into the run-in.
Schumacher continued: “You can’t worry about what others are doing around you, we can’t be concerned about that, what we know is there’s 12 games to go for us, that’s a lot of points to play for and we have to make sure that we attack every single game with the positive mindset to just win the game and see what happens, and we won’t get overly affected about the outcomes of what’s going on elsewhere.
“We’re unbeaten in nine, we probably should have won two out of the four draws, Lincoln and Stevenage were fair results but Reading and Blackpool, I felt we did more than enough to win both of them games, but we didn’t, we’ll get onto the next game and try and win that one.”
Schumacher provided an update on squad availability ahead of the long trip to the South-West.
He added: “Ruben (Rodrigues) is back in training, he trained on Tuesday with medical team and he’s back with the main group, Macca (John McAtee) is going to missing from Saturday’s game, he’s got a little hamstring strain from his scan, so he’ll probably miss this game and probably the next one, it’s not a majorly serious one but he won’t be able to travel.
“Everybody else is fit and ready to go.”
Watch Steven’s pre-match interview in full by clicking here!