LAST Saturday was our first defeat in quite some time. It was a game I felt we didn’t deserve to lose and while we probably didn’t do enough to deserve to win the game, there were still plenty of positives, individually and collectively.

On the negative side though, we lost Lloyd Macklin and Simon Dunn to injury and they will be major doubts for this Saturday’s cup tie, along with Liam Enver-Marum and Sam Argent, who are still struggling with knee problems.

The cup game on Saturday will be a huge test for the players. Telford play their football in a league above us and having seen the highlights of their game against Bristol Rovers on Saturday, they were very unfortunate to lose.

They had a lot of chances and got very dangerous balls into the box from open play, corners and long throws. This is something we are going to have to deal with if we want to progress.

We will be taking it day by day and assessing players on their availability as Tom Bird and Nathan Smart are also battling illness.

Whoever is available though, I am sure they will do the club proud and hopefully be celebrating a place in the second round on Saturday night.

The academy had no game last week but they faced a trip to QPR yesterday in the search of more points to close the gap on the leaders.

One of the academy players, George Hallahan, signed first team forms last week as a reward to his excellent start to the season. George has scored a lot of goals already and his attitude this season has been first class.

Regards,

Jason