FA Trophy Preview

Tomorrow we look forward to the visit of Windsor & Eton for what should be a high quality FA Trophy game. I think it showed on their recent league visit they are a more than capable side with some excellent players so we will have to be on song to progress into the next round.

From our point of view we are pretty much at full strength with a few absentees due to illness during the 2-1 win at Hillingdon. Our only doubt is Andy Gunn who came off with a tight hamstring. This is not as serious as we first feared and Andy will be selected subject to the advice of Physio Neil Greig.

Steve Smith has arrived from Hemel in goal and I am sure he will prove a success for the club. Steve adds organisational skills and experience at the back which I feel is vital with lots of young players in the squad.

Generally the team are shaping up well but I am very keen to see an improvement in our play over the last 2 games. I felt we were too respectful towards Farnborough last week and didn’t retain the ball well enough on the whole over the 90 minutes and deserved to be beaten. We must impose ourselves against the opposition from the outset and not wait until we are behind to start playing – that said our second half performance demonstrated we can compete with any in this league.

Other player news Mark Janes is gaining valuable first team experience with Witney United on loan, he is a very talented player with great potential whilst Gareth Tucker is about to start a similar arrangement at Wantage Town.

As we know our squad is very strong at present and there are often difficult decisions to be made each week it is inevitable at times that we have difficulties in managing this as we all want to play! but I feel for us to achieve anything this year all of the players will play an important role