Schumacher | Have To Keep Our Eye On The Ball

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Wanderers Head Coach Steven Schumacher is "looking forward to the challenge" of Cardiff City when the Whites visit South Wales for a Saturday lunchtime fixture in Sky Bet League One.

Having achieved four points from the two Easter weekend fixtures - a 2-1 triumph away at Plymouth Argyle and a 2-2 home draw with Stockport County, attention now turns to Brian Barry-Murphy's Bluebirds. 

Schumacher told Wanderers TV: “Cardiff have been outstanding for the majority of the season and they have recently fallen to second in the league but for a long period they were the best team, so we need to be at it and look forward to the challenge.

“It’s a really good stadium, I’m sure that it will be a really good atmosphere, their crowd are going to be up for it, as will our crowd, I don’t know exactly how many we are taking but if it’s anything that we took to Plymouth and this season up and down the country, it should lend itself to be a good atmosphere and a good game of football, like the first game was at our place. It should be decent to watch and I’m looking forward to it.

 

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“I’m sure the game will be tight and both teams will have to work really hard to break the other one down, but it’s a challenge we’re looking forward to and these are the best games you want to be involved in.

“We’ve got five games left and they are all good games. We can’t take our eye off the ball and we can’t look too far ahead and think what if, or look too far behind and panic, we need to focus on ourselves and pick up three points where we can and pick up more momentum as these things are going to be important, and keep on playing well.

"In the last two games we've shown two different sides to us. On Friday, we had to really dig in to find a way to get a result at Plymouth, and on Monday against Stockport, we had to be creative to get ourselves back into the game, so we've shown all season that we can mix it whichever way the game unfolds.

"Four points over Easter was good, we would have liked six points if Chris' (Forino's) header would have gone the other side of the crossbar late on, we would have been celebrating two victories. We picked up four points against two good teams and we're going up against another good team on Saturday, so hopefully we can get some more points on the board."

 

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Heading into the final five games of the campaign, Schumacher wants to keep the momentum going after a positive last two results, reserving special praise for forward Johnny Kenny. 

Schumacher continued: "Getting momentum and confidence and performance levels right is really important, Johnny (Kenny) is somebody who has been playing well as have a few others over the last few months, so we need to keep that confidence high as players play at their best when they are full of confidence, so long may that continue for Johnny and for the rest of the team.

"We need to stick to the plan and keep standards high everyday in training and hopefully that can transpire onto the pitch."

Schumacher also provided an update on squad availability ahead of the Cardiff clash, with John McAtee suspended. . 

He added: "It's a tough period over Easter, we got a few knocks and niggles from the game on Monday, there's a couple of things that happened this week, we've had a bit of illness in camp, Johno (George Johnston) missed the game on Monday, but he's trained so we'll leave everything to the last minute and get ready for an early kick-off on Saturday."

Watch Steven’s pre-match interview in full by clicking here!

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