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Match Preview - Atherton Collieries vs Newcastle Town

Basement side Atherton Collieries up next for Castle

 

Providing that the recent torrential rain doesn’t waterlog their pitch, next up for us tomorrow in the league is basement side Atherton Collieries.

And one thing’s for sure, our highly experienced gaffer Neil Baker will be expecting a lot more from the team from what we saw on Saturday.


But while the 1-1 draw at Wythenshawe wasn’t one of our better performances of the season, the positives of how this side never give up the ghost, is a really important positive to take from our late show in south Manchester at the weekend.


Great teams score late goals. We’re not a great team – well not yet – but we have scored three goals after the 90th minute to salvage something from games when all had seemed lost, and that’s a good habit to form in anyone’s book.


Tomorrow, we need to be it from the first whistle. Atherton Collieries – or The Colls as they are known – have had a terrible start to the season having only taken one point from their opening six games. It took them until their sixth game of the season to score a goal.


But they are a different beast now with their former manager Michael Clegg back at the helm after a brief sojourn at Macclesfield, where he took the Cheshire club to the Northern Premier League Premier play-off final. Clegg has brought some players he is very familiar with back into the fold and has an astonishing record at The Colls having managed them for 300+ games in his first stint for the club and taken them up through the leagues.


As for us, well we certainly have options. Jack Derbyshire is back available while Ty Webster and Ethan Vale impressed after coming on as subs on Saturday, so will be pushing for a place. Having these options in the squad will be very important in the coming weeks, as we will be playing almost exclusively twice a week from now until the end of November – weather permitting.


Having only tasted one defeat in five league games this season, we travel to north west Manchester in confident mood and will be keen to get back on the winning trail after four games (in all competitions) without tasting success.


It’s time to go again.


Come on Castle!

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