"We need another big performance"
United look to continue their recent progress as they welcome Aldershot Town to the Kassam Stadium tomorrow. Having won their last league game, at home to Northampton, United earned an FA Cup replay at Accrington last weekend and then came through a tricky JPT quarter final at Plymouth on Tuesday night. It has been a good week, and Manager Chris Wilder wants to cap it all with another three points from a league encounter with the Shots.
“If you’d said as we were travelling up to Accrington last Friday that we’d still be involved in the FA Cup, where we still have an opportunity of progressing, and that we would also be in the area semi-finals of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy we’d have taken that because it has been a good week in terms of the cups. But now we really need to go and nail another big performance and good result on Saturday in the league against Aldershot,” Chris told Yellow Player.
“We will respect that Aldershot have good players and got a good result up at Fleetwood, but we have to concentrate on ourselves and make sure that we are right. We will have a few players back, Tony Capaldi, Peter Leven and Tommy Craddock, which is really good. We also had two boys who came through 90 minutes in midweek and were excellent, Liam and Damian, and we also had good performances from lads who have not been playing regularly.”
The day will be tinged with sadness as the U’s pay their respects to former player Mitchell Cole, with the players wearing special t-shirts in the warm up and then everyone joining a minute’s applause for the former United winger.
“It will be a different type of day with things going on regarding Mitchell before the game, and an atmosphere that will be a bit different to a usual league game,” Chris said. “It really is important that the players give it everything once we kick off and give the supporters something to get behind.”
United are starting to build some momentum and the manager will be looking for more of the same tomorrow:
“Regardless of the problems we have had I think we have had some decent performances over the last month or six weeks, and we have gone to game-by-game as our approach. All we are looking forward to is Saturday, which is a big game for us and one where we need to produce a real positive front-foot performance. There is no reason why we shouldn’t do that.”
See the whole interview, then enjoy this week’s preview show at 3pm today, only in Yellow Player