United boss Chris Beech revealed on Tuesday night that the data received after the weekend home game against Cambridge had shown that the players had returned to the levels they had achieved pre-January in a run that had taken them to the top of the table.
Another high-energy performance followed against Crawley, bringing a very dominant and commanding display in all areas of the pitch.
“We didn’t let them breathe, but we’ve done that to so many opponents,” the manager said. “It’s not something new, it’s just something that’s great to get back to.
“We’d have liked to have done it more regular with what we’ve been through. We hit the physical statistics that we’d seen prior to January for the first time on Saturday, so I think we’ll have repeated that again.
“The ball seemed to stay in play a bit more as well, probably because there was less wind.”
“We didn’t train that much on Monday because, like I say, for the first time since all this has happened we hit the physical markers we generally did regularly before Walsall, before Covid, at the weekend,” he confirmed.
“I thought, well done boys, we’re now getting back to where we were. That’s why I went easy on them before Crawley in terms of prep.
“From there we had Wednesday off. The lads who didn’t start trained after the game, and there was no reserve game this week because of the travel.
“We did have an option to play Middlesbrough, but we decided not to. It would be nice, but with the travel, and the chance that you could pick up and injury, sometimes you think it could be a good thing and next minute you’re five players down.
“We’ll train here today and it’s about a seven-hour trip, it’ll be Good Friday as well, and there’s a little bit of loosening up of household behaviour, so I’d imagine the roads will be a bit busier.
“We’ll head down there and try and do something when we get down there rather than travel, train and carry on travelling. It’ll turn into a long nine or ten hour day if we did.”
