Paul Simpson joined us ahead of Saturday’s home fixture against Blackpool.
He said: “I think of late, we’ve had some really positive performances and results on the road, we've got to take confidence from that.
“We’ve got to take it into our home games, we’ve got to start getting back to solid performances and solid results at home, and hopefully what they did on Tuesday at Cheltenham, will give them that belief to be able to take it into this game against Blackpool, which I do think, will be a total different game.
“Cheltenham are quite direct, but really effective the way they do it and we managed to manage all of that.
“This weekend against Blackpool, they’re a footballing side and we’ve got to be able to stand up to that as well.
“We have to start giving our home fans something back.
“They’ve supported us so loyally over the season and we haven’t done enough in terms of giving them strong performances that gets good results, so we want to do it, we’ve got two home games left out of the three and we want to try and do it properly in these home games and get them a positive result that they can take away.”
Speaking on United’s support further, he added: “It’ll be fantastic if we can keep our fans with us, it really will.
“In the current climate, it’s really difficult for me to stand here and appeal for them to come in because they’ve shown their loyalty over the season, they’ve stuck with us, I trust them to do what they think is the right thing to do.
“We know that Blackpool are going to bring a lot of fans with them, they still have an outside chance or maybe even a strong chance of getting in the play-offs, they probably need to win all three of their games to have a real good chance of it.
“We know it’s going to be an atmosphere created by what they will bring and hopefully our fans will do what they’ve done all season and make it a good atmosphere for the home side as well.”
Touching on this weekend’s opponents, Simmo said: “They’re three points outside of it, they have three games left, but there’s no easy game in this league and we’ve got to make sure it’s not an easy game for them this weekend.
“On Tuesday night at Cheltenham, the challenge was to try and keep them involved in those bottom places, to try and give ourselves a boost.
“Now the challenge will be to stop Blackpool moving forward and we have to do those things because unfortunately, our own fate is sealed now.
“I do think it’ll be a tight game.
“I mean over the season, I think we’ve had 17 games where we’ve lost by the odd goal, so I do think it’ll be a tight game.
“The truth of it is that it’s only a tight game if we do our jobs properly because Blackpool are a good side, and if we don’t do it properly, it won’t be a tight game.
“We have to prepare as well as we possibly can, go into it with the belief that we took last Tuesday and make sure that we go and put a performance on,”
After making his return to the starting line-up, Fin Back was withdrawn in the second-half and was replaced by Jack Ellis.
“He’s a bit sore still, little bit of swelling, we’re hoping that it’ll settle down in time for Saturday.
“It will be nice if we can have the easy option of picking the same team.
“Harrison Neal has a problem as well, that we’re hoping will settle down.
“Apart from that, I think there’s just tiredness in there, but that should be fine come Saturday afternoon.”
Georgie Kelly continued his progress to full fitness after featuring for 60 and 70 minutes at Northampton and Cheltenham, respectively.
“We’ve managed him so far with that and it’s nice to have an option of Josh Kayode to bring on when you’re taking Georgie Kelly off, so those three will hopefully be okay for this weekend and we’ll be able to manage them.
“It’s a blow losing Dan Butterworth and Sean Maguire and not having them available."
Paul provided the following regarding the recent disciplinary issue: “In all fairness to the three of them, they all came in and apologised straight away. They wanted to apologise to me, they want to apologise to the players, they haven’t had a chance to do that yet, but they will. They want to apologise to the fans because they know it doesn’t look right, they know they’ve made a mistake.
“They’ve been disciplined in the severest way that we can within PFA guidelines, but we want to move forward now, they’re young lads, they’ve made a mistake.
“At any time in a football career it’s a mistake, but to do it in the current situation is a big mistake because it doesn’t reflect well on the football club.
“They know that and they’ve apologised straight away, they’ve admitted it, which I think is something as well.
“We move forward now, they’re back in the group training now and we’ve just got to move on with it.”
Jake Allan, Aran Fitzpatrick, Sam Hetherington and Josh O’Brien have recently been offered third-year scholarships by the club.
Speaking on this, Simmo said: "It's a different route we're taking with them, normally when they come to the end of their scholarship it's 'are they good enough for a pro contract', which means they have to come in and be involved in the first team, because we don't have any other holding area for them.
"We've looked at the third-year scholarship as a way to try and get them more development time, more coaching time, rather than being involved in the first team. The way it works normally in a season is play, recover, play, sometimes you get a week of training, so there's very little opportunity for development stuff.
"We're going down this route with them and I think it gives them an extra year to show that they're worthy of coming into it. I think it's fair to say that all four of them are not ready for the first team at the moment, but they've certainly shown enough over the two years they've been with us.
“When you consider people like Jake Allan, he’s probably only a couple of weeks away from coming to the end of a first-year scholarship, so to make the decision that he’s going to be a professional footballer is probably a little unfair.
“So we’ve looked to go down this route and we’ll see how that pans out over the next 12 months.
“They’ll train with the first team as and when we need them. They’ll be involved in first team games as and when we need them.
"The main idea is to give them another 12 months of development, stay involved in the Academy with the under-18 group, they're able to play in the youth team games, if they need games and we also have the option of sending them out on loan if we want to.
“They’ve gone into senior football and they’ve all shown that they can handle that and I think that’s important as well because that’s a big step when you’re trying to prepare players for the next part of their game.
“We’ll see how they all go, it’s good for them, it’s obviously disappointing news for the other second-years who we’ve told are not going to be retained, but the challenge for those is to go and show us that we’ve made a mistake.
“They wouldn’t be the first player to do that and they certainly won’t be the last one either.
“At this stage, there’s still so much more development for them and hopefully they go on and have successful careers in whatever they choose to do.”
United will look to provide any help required for the lads who are leaving us.
Speaking on this, Paul added: “Matthew [Scandle] has come into the Academy, that's his role to help them in the transition from being a YTS footballer to whatever they want to do.
“There are lots of pathways that they can follow and it’s up to us as a club to give them the care that they need.”
