Wanderers Head Coach Steven Schumacher believes his side can show their capability away at Bradford City on Saturday afternoon in Sky Bet League One, but he expects a difficult challenge at Valley Parade.
The Whites will be backed by a sold-out following in West Yorkshire for their final away encounter of the season, knowing that they can secure their place in the play-offs, with Schumacher coming up against a club he made over 100 appearances for, and his former manager, Graham Alexander.
Previewing the Bantams contest, Schumacher told Wanderers TV: “It’s their last home fixture, they are remembering the Valley Parade Fire tragedy, so the atmosphere will be an intense one. Bradford are going well, they are a team who are right behind us in the league, it’s a difficult game against another opponent that are going for the top six, that we’ve faced in the final seven games, so the players have to be up for it, there’s no other way about it, and we have to be motivated to go and perform at our best otherwise you’ll get a result that you don’t want.
“We haven’t focused on what’s going on around us, it’s not going to change our mindset and we want to finish the season as strong as possible, we’re playing two really good teams in the last two league fixtures, so we don’t want to give them an advantage in any of them, so the mindset is going to win the game at Valley Parade, which won’t be easy, but we’ve got the capability to do so.
“Both games that we had were difficult games. I know the Vertu Trophy game, we ended up winning it by three goals but it wasn’t a three goal margin, it was tight, it could have gone either way, and the league game was tight, we had opportunities, they had one or two late on and I expect it will be a tough game.
“Graham is a really experienced coach, he’s got his team really well organised and their motivation levels to keep going are similar to ourselves and they score a fair few late goals, they had to come from behind having suffered an early set back against (Plymouth) Argyle, so we know that they are a team that won’t give in, so we’re expecting a really tough afternoon so we have to be at our best to win it."
“They have been brilliant and they will probably finish in the play-offs and they can take huge credit for that as a newly promoted team to take that momentum into a higher division shows how good their team spirit is and how well organised they are. They’ve had a great season but we’ve also been pretty consistent ourselves and we want that to continue.
“There’s two league games to go and anything can happen so we’ll try and come through them unscathed but more importantly, try to come through them with some good results.”
Schumacher also provided an update on squad availability ahead of Bradford away.
He added: “Xavier Simons has trained with the group, he’s getting sharper and getting a bit closer to some action so that’s positive, we’ve missed him and Ethan (Erhahon) and Kyle Dempsey for a couple of games so we’ve been a bit light in midfield, so having Xavi back in there to choose from will be a positive.
“We’ve had a niggle for the weekend’s game so we’ll see how that is in the morning before we make a decision on the final starting XI, but apart from that we’re in good spirits. Ethan isn’t far behind, he’s been stepping up his work and the plan is for him to start training next week so hopefully we’ll get them both on the pitch soon.”
Watch Steven’s pre-match interview in full by clicking here!