Following their excellent win on Tuesday night, United are back on the road again on Saturday as they travel to a Welling side with the best home record in division.
With 11 wins and 2 draws from their 15 games so far, Gary Johnson’s men face a tough task, but one that he feels they’re more than equal to.
“We’ve got to check why they’ve got the best home results in our league, and we will do a lot of homework on them in as much as why that’s the case.” said Johnson,
“As we say every week, every team has strengths and weaknesses. We have to find their weaknesses and try not to see their strengths. The way you do that is to make sure your own team is ready to go and play, then you’ve got to hope that they haven’t played a team that’s doing as well as us at the moment. We’ll try and keep it going and give them hopefully more problems that others have given them at home recently.”
The boss is in no doubt that Welling are one of the best sides in National League South, and says his side will need to be on top form to emerge with another valuable three points.
“I think Welling are one of the top teams, they can definitely potentially hurt you, we have to respect them. I know they’ll respect us, it wasn’t an easy game when we played Welling at home. They were up there originally and they’re fighting for their lives to make sure they get a play off place, which I think they will. We see it as another big game for us at this stage. I keep saying week after week it’s all relative to the level that we’re at, we’ve got inconsistencies, they have, and we’ve just got to make sure we keep improving on those inconsistencies ourselves. Of course any team in the top half of the table can beat any other team on their day.”
With Torquay facing back-to-back away games, the gaffer was quick to highlight the importance of preparation and recovery to prevent any tiredness or fatigue creeping into his squad.
“I think you have to game manage, but you have to manage the game in preparation as well, you have to make sure there’s good preparation. We have a good physio team, Dan [Feasey] heads that, we’ve already worked out how we’re going to recover. They would have had a rest yesterday, we’ll have a recovery session today and we’ll be working on stuff that we need to work on for Welling when we train on Bristol City’s training ground on Friday. We’ve got enough time to recover and we’ve got enough time for preparation. We know what we have to do, and hopefully that’ll make sure that they’re ready come Saturday. Of course Welling played on the same day as us as well, so there’s no advantage there, they’ll be getting asked the same questions.”
Johnson reports no new worries on the selection front, with only Opi Edwards unavailable as he continues his recovery from injury.
“We’re ok, obviously there’s Opi but everyone else has come through. There’s five subs on the bench that are desperate to play, and have just got to wait for their opportunity. A couple might get their opportunity on Saturday just to rest a coupe but we haven’t decided that just yet.”