Appointed as manager of Cheltenham Town in September 2018, manager Michael Duff’s leadership of the squad was his first senior management role in football.
Similar to a number of managers in Sky Bet League One this season, Belfast native Duff began his senior playing career at the club he is currently in charge of. He first signed as a player with Cheltenham Town in 1996. He made more than 700 career appearances at club level with both Cheltenham and Burnley, Duff also enjoyed an international career as a player with Northern Ireland from 2002-12.
Since taking the managerial helm at Whaddon Road, Duff has been twice awarded League Two Manager of the Month (September 2019 and February 2020), in addition to helping the Robins earn their first-ever automatic promotion to Sky Bet League One in April.
Ahead of Saturday’s match, Cheltenham manager Michael Duff spoke to the media:
On Doncaster Rovers’ recent form and results…
“They are a much bigger club than us. They’ve been at the level longer than us, and they’ve got a manager who has won the league we’ve just got out of. We know what we need to perform. The last two home games they’ve lost to Wycombe [Wanderers] through to two set pieces, and absolutely dominated MK Dons. Two teams we’ve played at home and taken a point from those two games.”
On the talent assembled by Richie Wellens…
“They’ve got good players, a good manager and a good club. They’re lacking someone to put chances away because they are creating chances. They’ve created plenty in recent games. We need to make sure we are on it and relying on them to miss chances. We need to stop chances being created and create more of our own.
“If we think we can just rock up at Doncaster and be alright…absolutely no chance. We’ll be going there fully focused, knowing we need to turn up to get any sort of result. That is the case every week, and it’s been proven this season, going away to bigger teams. If we haven’t turned up, then we’ve been dealt with accordingly. So, we’ve been burned by that.”
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