AFC Fylde boss warns against complacency

AFC Fylde hope they will have reason to be happy this afternoon Picture: Steve McLellan

After two away draws last week, the Coasters return to Mill Farm this afternoon where they take on a Braintree side that have won just one of their 13 games so far this season.

On the face of it, it appears to be the perfect fixture for Challinor’s men to get back to winning ways and reinvigorate their promotion push, but the Fylde boss believes the clash will be more difficult than some might predict.

He told The Gazette: “It’s very similar to the last home game we had against Aldershot in the fact that everybody outside the club thinks it’s a gimme and we’ll be able to roll Braintree over. That’s far from the case.

“I’ve seen some of their recent games and they don’t play like a team that is struggling.

“They split, they get it at the back and they try and play through the thirds. They’ve not scored enough goals which is the big difference coming into this league from the division below. You’ve got to be clinical and ruthless when you get your opportunities.

“The majority of the games they have lost have been by a single goal, they’ve been good defensively.

“You can take the Leyton Orient result (5-1) with a little bit of a pinch of salt for conceding from long throw-ins, a penalty and the keeper making a poor decision to come out of his box and leaving an open goal.

“Ultimately Leyton Orient are top of the league, they’re undefeated, and they went to Harrogate last week and scored three which no one else has done. So we know we’ve got to be at our best. They will come here and be resolute and try and stop us. They’ll be a threat.

“We’ve got to control what we can control and we’ve done that brilliantly over the course of the season in terms of our workrate, our application and the intensity we’ve played at.

“Unfortunately with the opportunities we’ve created, we’ve not stuck them away and we’ve not been as clinical as we were last year.

“Some of the games last year where we had some big scorelines, if you look at those games we took most, if not all, of our chances. We’re not doing that at the moment.

“But things can turn around quickly, people have just got to be composed in front of goal.”