The Blues face Aston Villa’s under-21 side tonight with the sides knowing that they can’t progress from the group stage in this season’s Papa John’s Trophy, with Sunderland and Fleetwood left to slug that out having beaten both of this evening’s combatants.
Speaking about the game, manager Chris Beech said: “It’s good to be playing again.
“There’ll be a good change around of who plays, with a couple of lads from the weekend involved, but it gives a great opportunity to everyone who’s been patient so far.
“It’s a first team game but we know where we are in that competition, so we’ll have to use it to the best of our abilities in our current situation.”
“We will have a number of our younger lads out there,” he added. “There’s Lewis Bell and Taylos Charters, of course, and Josh Dixon will be involved in the squad if he gets through training ok.
“These games are important for these lads. Josh hasn’t played for two years so his next game will be big for him.
“It’s important to the lads who played on Sunday at Hayes. It’s players like Jack Armer, it will be his third start on Tuesday, and he’ll want to do well.
“Whoever plays they’ll be getting minutes out on this great pitch of ours. They’ll be up against some good young players, but we’ll be young as well.”
And with new arrival Rhys Bennett having made his debut against Cheltenham, he told us: “Rhys is a good player. He’s a centre half but in the embers of the game we needed a bit of height and to try and inject a little bit of physicality to the game.
“He did that for us. He’s quite fit, he was at Northampton for three weeks before he came here, so he’s fit. He just wants to get on with it again.”
