Swindon Town

MARTIN Ling hopes that his side can replicate the performance they put in at Chesterfield a fortnight ago when Rochdale come to town tomorrow.

After training for a large part of the week away from Calne due to the weather, the Town boss declared that his team will be raring to go.

“It seems ages since we played a game of football,” he said. “For the players and myself it’s been a bit awkward this week. We’ve only been on grass on Monday at the training ground. We’ve not been on the grass since then we’ve been on the astroturf at Wootton Bassett because of the heavy weather. It’s not ideal but the astro pitches are so much better than the astros when I used to play. The training has been sharp, bright and the lads will be raring to go.

“I hope we’re going to into this game as a different proposition to when we went in, in my first game. We didn’t perform well that day. They controlled the game for most of it. Hopefully the shoe is on the other foot tomorrow. I hope we can control the game and are able to put a good home performance together. I’ve had two home games and we’ve won them both but we’ve not had a 90-minute performance here at the County Ground yet. We did at Chesterfield two weeks ago and it would be nice to put that type of performance on for our own support.

“Saturday is the start of a busy period. We all know what Christmas is about; the games come at you thick and fast so it’s important we start December off on the front foot and come away with the three points.”

The manager also provided an injury update.

“Nath Thompson is the only absentee,” he said. “Everyone else is fit – Yaser (Kasim) and Drissa (Traore) are back so we have a fully fit squad apart from the Liverpool boys but Kev Stewart is coming back to train with us next week. We have a reserve game on Tuesday so we’ll look to get him playing some part in that.”

“Nathan has just had a precautionary scan this week and we get the results tonight. Once we get the results back it gives us a bit more leeway with what he can do and can’t do.”