Latics crave U-turn up table

Lee Johnson.

BY early tonight, the gap between the teams sitting 19th and 20th in npower League One may be as narrow as one point — or as wide as seven.

Much rests on how Colchester, nestled right on top of Athletic and four points better off having played twice more, performed at home to Bournemouth. And equally, of course, how Athletic fared at Swindon today.

Both Good Friday tasks were stiff ones for teams at the wrong end of a division which is controlled at its head by the most well-heeled clubs.

Few other rivals in League One can live with the spending power of the Cherries and the Robins and those that can — Doncaster and Sheffield United, for example — are firmly in with promotion chances themselves.

Athletic and Colchester operate on a radically-different financial footing.

And while nicking results off the high achievers provides valuable unexpected sustenance at this stage of the season, it is arguably more important that Athletic generate a positive result against their relegation rivals on Easter Monday at Boundary Park.

Manager Lee Johnson, though, is reluctant to rank any of his nine remaining fixtures of 2012-13 as being of higher importance than any other as he bids to keep the club afloat in the third tier.

"They are all big games," said Johnson, speaking before today's coach journey south to Wiltshire.

"Hartlepool and Swindon (were) big games and I know it sounds clichéd, but they are all worth three points.

"We will try to win every game we play, definitely. I will not go into matches trying to nick draws or anything like that, because I don't believe in that.

"I believe to actually go and do something, to win a game, you have to try to score goals and that is what we aim to do.

"All we can do is control the controllables.

"We can't affect how other teams do around us, unless we play them.

"But if we have the right mentality that we will (win games) anyway, we have a better chance than just watching the results come in on Sky Sports News hoping that certain ones go our way."

As for the U's, they are something of an enigma.

Utterly awful the last time Athletic took them on at the Weston Homes Community Stadium, in a contest that ended in a highly flattering 2-0 defeat for the home side, the Essex outfit have found a new resilience lately and promise to be no pushovers.

Colchester beat play-off chasing Yeovil 2-0 in late February and that was a result which kick-started a recent run of only one defeat in six games.

"I saw (Colchester) against Doncaster earlier this year," added Johnson, who will use his scouting contacts to pick up information for use in preparing for the game.

"It was a poor contest, but they did well and nearly got what was a useful point up there in a difficult game.

"They lost to a late goal and were very unlucky. We know enough about them, intelligence-wise."