City of Liverpool manager Michael Ellison has mixed feelings going into the clash with Market Drayton but admits his side are ‘raring to go’.
The Purps have suffered with a COVID outbreak in recent weeks and saw their clashes with Bootle and Widnes postponed.
Their last match came in mid-December when they were controversially beaten 1-0 by Ramsbottom United.
The former Runcorn Linnets boss had admitted preparation for the clash with the league’s bottom side has been far from ideal with positive cases hampering training.
But he has expressed his excitement to get back to the action.
He told Off The Park: “It feels like an age, it seems with Workington getting cancelled, Bootle and Widnes I think we’ve played one and other teams have played four so we’re playing catch-up, the lads are raring to go, trained for the first time in three weeks, you just want to get back playing so I’m looking forward to it.
“The prep hasn’t been great, it’s been poor if I’m being honest, to train once in three weeks is never good. When we had wind the Widnes game would be off we didn’t train, we didn’t want it to spread so we sent the lads stuff to do but when you’re not together you can’t work on nothing, you lose that.
“Prep hasn’t been great it was nice to see everyone again and lads have done their stuff who have been able to, those who had Covid weren’t so they were a bit groggy so we’ll train again and hopefully get the game on I’ve got everything crossed so that can happen we just want to get back and play and get a bit of football that’s what we’re here for.
“We played them at home and it was a really good performance I think playing away will be totally different. We know what to expect, they’re fighting for their lives and we certainly won’t be overlooking it, it’s never won before the game and ultimately we have to turn up, put a performance in and get the win that’s what we intend to do.
“You take an early goal in any game I think we have to look at how we set up a little bit, we normally want to press from the front we might have to change that slightly but we have to start fast.
“It might be the case of we have to use the bench a little bit earlier than what we’d like, again a lot of the focus has been on squad selection we might have to select lads who haven’t had Covid and are at a decent bit of fitness, unfortunately, that’s just the way it is.
“That’s something we will look at, it’s an idea to use the lads we think are fittest and they have tomorrow [training] to show us that unfortunately some are going to miss out for that reason.”
[Featured image: City of Liverpool]
