Gaffer says his side have nothing to fear and can take inspiration from stand-in skipper.
Paul Dickov has hailed his side’s performances on the road to date and says that his team must take their recent performances in to today’s League 1 clash with Walsall.Rovers, though knocked of the League Cup, put in a commanding second half performance against Kit Symons’ Fulham side.
“Our away form has been fantastic and we have to take both Saturday’s and Tuesday results in to what we’re trying to do on Saturday.
“In the second half we took the game to them and showed positivity. They’ve got some premier league players and we tested them and ourselves.
“It was a young back four the other night so I’ll give them a little bit of leeway and it gives us a platform to go forward because you only learn by making mistakes.”
While Walsall have only registered one win this term, Dickov says he can’t underestimate Dean Smith’s side.
“You cant look too much in to it (the fact they’ve scored 1 in four) because it’s in the past and they could easily look at our performance against Bristol City and take positives from that,” he said.
“We had them watched when they lost to Rochdale and we thought we’ve got a right chance but then we’ve seen them since and know that we’ve got to be on our toes.
“Walsall are a good footballing team and they were unlucky not to win at Gillingham. They have some good players who want to win and it’s out there to see that we play better when we play the footballing sides.”
Rovers’ last win at Walsall came only two years ago when goals from Chris Brown, David Cotterill and Kyle Bennett rounded off a satisfying 3-0 win for the visitors.
“Defence has to be your starting point because the Coppingers and Forresters of the world will create chances for us and the team knows that if we keep clean sheets then that’s massive and we can go on and win matches,” said Dickov.
“The average age of the group since I came in has come down a lot, which is something we’ve been trying to do as a club to build a foundation. I love working with the players and we’ve got a group – regardless of how old they are – with Copps the standout example of how he wants to better himself all the time. After the games, he wants to know all his stats e.g. crosses and shots and he’s our most senior pro. If younger lads see James leading by example, they’re likely to follow.”