Players hungry for tasty Roses clash

PUT yourself in the middle of a sea of Blues at Tuesday’s £2 entry game

Latics’ assistant manager writes for Chron Sport every Friday
CONFIDENCE is not in short supply as we make the short trip over the Pennines to take on Huddersfield Town tomorrow.

We are going there to win the game, not just to soak up a load of pressure.

Doing a ‘Dagenham’ is not what we are about.

It is a game that should have a bit of everything. We know all about each other from the game earlier this season and as a cross-Pennine derby it should be a tasty one. Let’s hope so.

This is one of the main games that players look forward to and you can tell that is the case just by listening to them talk in the changing room.

It will certainly be a difficult game. Huddersfield are in a rich vein of form at the moment and are unbeaten in their last seven in the league.

They are one of the main contenders to go up this season and at the moment they are right up near the top of the division.

When you talk about a league season lasting for 46 games, this is when the sort of resources that Huddersfield have at their disposal come into play.

But we are not looking at that. It is all to play for.

I have had an-other look back at the Dagenham and Redbridge home game from last weekend and unfortunately, we are going over old ground again.

Without playing brilliantly, we were by far the better side and they didn’t really offer anything going forward.

They came to Boundary Park not to get beaten and once we scored, we had two or three opportunities — real scoring opportunities, not just half-chances — after that where we should have really finished them off.

We created enough in front of goal to win two games of football, never mind one.

But we didn’t over-stretch their goalkeeper and were left with only a single point to show for our efforts.

A mistake at the back again cost us and it was very frustrating for everyone again on the day.

You could probably find that two or three things — including an overeager ball boy! — contributed to the Dagenham equaliser.

The most important was that we switched off for just that crucial split-second.

It cost us and that seems to be the way it is going this season, that a wrong decision or hesitation on our part is punished.