Gaffer gives his assessment prior to Gresty Road visit.
Paul Dickov has said that he faces the rare luxury of naming the same starting line up for Saturday’s game at Crewe, which defeated Rochdale 3-1 last week.The Rovers manager stated that “it would be hard to leave anybody out” prior to yet another away fixture; their third in a row.
The fact that Rovers have lost just once in five games, is one that is not lost on Dickov either.
“It’s crucial to get form at any time but when you have a lot of games in a short space of time you don’t seem to get as tired if you're winning games,” he said.
“Fatigue usually seems to hit them when you're losing games and you're not playing very well and confidence is a bit low but the one thing we've taken from sort of three or four weeks is a lot of confidence.
“We've worked a lot harder and I know with the ball we were fantastic on Saturday and we were a lot harder to play against and you need to do both sides of the game and we're slowly but surely getting that at the moment.”
Dickov hailed the “never-say-die” attitude of his players – many of whom he was unable to single out individually – in the pursuit of victory against in-form Dale and said it could have been some of the best football he has seen his side play during his 16 month tenure.
“I thought the performance was top class even when it was eleven vs eleven thought we were excellent and they showed as lot of character to come back from a goal down early doors and then some of the football we played was the best we've played this season if not in the time I’ve been here.
“We have to make sure now with the games coming up that we carry that on and I think it comes back to what I said about consistency in team selection, people getting up to speed fitness wise.
“I know we're in November now but players like Richie Wellens missed a full pre-season, Curtis [Main] has been injured having Andy Butler and Sam Johnstone back there are all contributing factors to this little run we've got going at the minute.”