Steven Schumacher is urging his players to back up their big derby win to keep climbing the League One table, writes Pete Oliver.
Wanderers moved up a place to fifth with Saturday’s vital victory at Wigan Athletic as Schumacher’s men completed a double over their local rivals with a first win in five league games.
The re-juvenated Whites – buoyed by Josh Sheehan’s late winner – now go to Stevenage on Tuesday night for the only fixture in the division and know a fourth away success of the campaign will elevate them further up the play-off places.
“It's always good when you've won any game,” said Whites’ boss Schumacher, who confirmed on-loan forward Marcus Forss would again be missing with a hamtsring injury. “It's a bit better when you've won a local derby game, so the lads have been good.
“On Saturday we spoke about it afterwards, that it was a proper performance, a whole team effort, and that was the standard that we need to keep getting to.
“So although we enjoyed it, we spoke immediately as well that we need to perform like that on Tuesday night because we've got an equally as important a game coming up.
“It’s still three points on the line. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a local rival, we're going to a team who are really difficult to beat, especially on their own turf, so we have to go there with the attitude that this is going to be a really tough one.
“But but if we play to the level that we can play to and we do all of the basics well that we keep speaking about, then there's no reason why we can't go and win there.”
Stevenage have slipped out of the top six on the back of a six-game winless run and just one league win since late November.
But their record at the Lamex Stadium is still an enviable one and no side in League One has conceded fewer than the six goals let in on their own patch by Alex Revell’s men, who kick off a run of three successive home games in the fixture re-arranged from November’s international break.
“It's only Cardiff that have beat them there this year,” added Schumacher, whose side has the opportunity to go above Stockport County on goal difference and within four points of the automatic promotion places ahead of back-to-back home games of their own inside the next eight days.
“They've got the lowest amount of goals conceded in the league and we're second, so it shows you how difficult they are to score against.
“But I do think as well that if we play with the way we can play and we get our dangerous players in wide areas, our strikers being creative and if we're a threat from set-plays, then I do feel as though we've got players in the squad that can hurt them. We also know that if we're not 100 per cent defensively right they can hurt us.
“They've had a few sticky results of late, especially on Saturday losing away to Exeter. They wouldn't have been pleased with that, but that gives them a chance to respond and I'm sure Alex will have them fired up because they'll know that there's a good team coming into town and they have to be ready for us.
“January is going to be busy and all the games are important now. We're going into the latter stages of the season and we're excited about it. We've gone up to fifth. If we get a win tomorrow night then we close in on fourth and we'll see where it takes us.”
Watch the full pre-match interview with the Whites’ head coach on Wanderers TV