Swindon Town

MARTIN Ling has urged Town supporters to get behind the team and look forward as he prepares his side to take on Scunthorpe United at SN1 tomorrow.

Once a player at the County Ground, Ling will make his home managerial bow on Saturday afternoon and says that it has been an excellent week’s work on the training pitches at Calne.

“Whatever has gone on previously this year is now finished,” he told the official website. “We need to move on, we need a clean start and everyone pulling in the same direction and the right direction. We need them (the supporters) to be fully behind us and give us all the support they possibly can. Look at it as a clean start, look at is as moving on. Draw a line under what’s gone on - we can’t do anything about it. We can only look forward and I want them to be positive as we are as a group of staff.

“It’s been nice to work with Ross Embleton who came in this week and Luke (Williams), we all know each other from time spent elsewhere. It’s been an excellent week. Everything on the training pitch that we’ve asked for and looked for has been good so it’s been a positive week. We’ve prepared right - we’ve done some work on how we’re going to go about it and the threats that Scunthorpe will create for us. We’re fully aware of their strengths and weaknesses and our own strengths too.”

On the state of play with the playing personnel at his disposal tomorrow, Ling added: “Everyone is available to us apart from the boys on international duty and Nathan Thompson who has still got his groin problem. So it’s a fully fit squad apart from those four plus Jordan Williams and Kevin Stewart.

“Wes Thomas has been in-and-around us. He played 55 minutes in a reserve game on Tuesday so he comes into consideration for the squad and it’s nice to have him. Obviously the international boys will be a big miss and Nathan is a big miss as well but we’ll learn to cope with that.”

Finally, the Town boss challenged his players to put in a positive performance against the Iron tomorrow.

“It’s been a really enjoyable time so far,” he continued. “It’s nice to back doing what I love doing and it will be a special occasion for me personally tomorrow because I had such a good time here as a player. It’s nice to come back as the manager but once the game gets going its over to the players. It’s all about the players tomorrow. The first bit will be about me coming back but after that it’s down to them to put their best foot forward and put in a positive performance to stop the run of results. We hope to put a positive slant on tomorrow’s match and move on from there.”