Wellens - April is going to be huge

With the busy Easter football programme looming large, Athletic boss Richie Wellens has already spoken about how important the month of April will be for his squad.

Athletic head to Sky Bet League One automatic promotion chasers Wigan on Good Friday (1pm kick-off), after which they’ll have nine games left – eight of them in April.

With Athletic currently out of the relegation zone on goal difference only, Wellens already knows how pivotal next month will be.

He said: “This weekend (Athletic host Blackpool on Monday (3pm)) is only like a Saturday-Tuesday scenario.

“People always seem to make a big deal of the Easter programme, but the bigger picture for me is the fact that April is going to be a huge month for us.

“April is going to be the month when this squad kicks in.

“That’s not necessarily this weekend, but this month we might see squad players play who haven’t played as much as they’d have liked.

“We’re going to need them in the coming weeks now.

“There’s three or four players who are struggling to get fit right now, but these two games over Easter will hopefully give some players some game time.”

Ahead of the two games in four days, Wellens will have injuries to contend with, notably to skipper Anthony Gerrard (calf) and Craig Davies, who hasn’t trained since the home defeat by Portsmouth last Saturday week.

However, Athletic will crucially be robbed of the services of talented full-back Cameron Dummigan, probably for the remainder of the 2017/18 campaign.

Dummigan represented Northern Ireland’s under-21 side last Thursday night (March 22) against Spain, a match they lost 5-3, but it appears the 21-year old picked up an injury in the game.

It wasn’t the injury which has angered his manager, though, it was the way his defender was treated by Northern Ireland’s medical team.

Wellens said: “Injuries can happen, but the biggest frustration for me was that they didn’t scan him.

“You want your players to go away on Northern Ireland duty or international duty, but when your player goes away and gets injured, the least you expect is for them to scan him and they haven’t, so I’m not happy about that.

“I think since I’ve took over there’s probably five or six players who’ve shown massive improvement and Cameron is one of those.

“He’s done fantastic, so he’s going to be a big miss for us.”

While Athletic were inactive last weekend, Wigan won 2-0 at Bury to ease themselves back into the third tier’s top two.

Wellens, however, isn’t daunted by the prospect of heading to the DW Stadium to go head-to-head with a side who are clearly flying

“It’ll be a good football game,” said Wellens.

“Paul Cook is a tremendous manager at this level, and he’s already been successful at the level below with Portsmouth last season.

“He’s carried that momentum on.

“He’s obviously got great tools to work with and there’s been no surprises with regard to how his team plays.

“We’re trying to get that kind of mentality here. They are used to winning and have probably got seven or eight players still there from when they won this league two years ago.

“For me, they will win the league, they’re the best team, so it will be tough.

“We’re not talking about top versus a lower club in the Premier League. This is League One football, and if you’re on it on your day, we can get a result.

“We’ve took four points from Blackburn this season, so if we’re on it and Wigan don’t play to their potential, we can give them a good game.”