United face Bradford City at Brunton Park on Saturday afternoon with the Blues looking to get back to winning ways after their late surge on Tuesday night.
Speaking ahead of the game, manager Chris Beech said: “Bradford brought in a lot of players in January but we have a great opportunity to play against them while they’re in great form, and I’m really looking forward to that challenge.
“I know a lot of their players and it will be a really interesting test. We’ve got to look after ourselves and make sure we’re right at it.
“We want to get back to being competitive and winning games. We have been, but we haven’t seen that through to the end reward of getting points, and we need to accept that. Bradford are in a great place and we’ll be competing very hard to try and make sure we can get the three points.”
“We respect them 100 per cent, but ultimately we’ve got to try and look after ourselves and make sure we’re good, ready, challenging, competitive, energised and have the capability to respond to setback,” he continued. “There has been a criticism of the team of losing leads and not responding to setbacks.
“Well, they did that the other day. I think Grimsby are certainly not the worst team we’ve played, you could see that in their energy and efforts. Definitely not. But we came back and responded well, so we have to make sure we do that all the time.”
Returning to Brunton Park for a second time this season is former academy graduate Andy Cook, who has enjoying a lift following his half-season loan move to Valley Parade.
“He’ll be individually trying his best to do what he does and score a goal, work his opponent, be very physical, and they’ve got some very high technical football players in that team,” he told us. “That’s where they are and well done to them, but we’re competitive and want to fight for every point we’re trying to achieve.
“They have other good technical players alongside him, so like I say we’ll have to respect our opponents, as we always do, but at the same time as making sure we’re playing our game in a way that will get us what we want.”
