Johnnie Jackson’s focus is locked on Saturday’s visit to Walsall, with our next two games against the two sides immediately above us in the table.

“They’ve had a good result in the week, they’ll be buoyed by that,” said our manager. “We ourselves have had two decent results – a good win last weekend, on the back of a good point up at Bradford, that could have been more as well. We’re in a good place.”

Having taken four points from our previous two matches we’re aiming to get on a consistent run of form, with a derby day visit from Sutton United approaching next weekend. But Johnnie’s immediate attention is taken up by our trip to the West Midlands this Saturday, to tackle a Walsall side who beat third place Northampton on Tuesday night. 

“We’re going to a difficult place,” said Johnnie. “They’ll be disappointed with their start to the season as well. They’ll have expected to be higher, especially with the squad they’ve built in the summer. We know we’ve got a tough test coming on Saturday, but we’re looking forward to it.

“We’re not looking too far ahead. We’ve had two positive results, two positive performances, we need to build on that now, we need another positive performance. I feel that if we get that, we’ll pick up points. I’m not worried about the week after and so on.

“We’ve had a good week’s preparation and our sole focus is on Walsall – what we can try to do to hurt them and what they’ll try to do to us as well. Let’s deal with Saturday and try and get a positive result and then we’ll look beyond that after.”

You can see the full interview with Johnnie below, via this link to our official YouTube channel.

“We’ve spoken about it in the week, that I felt we started slowly against Colchester,” said Johnnie. “We conceded early at Bradford, although I think we didn’t start too poorly in that game, but they scored, and we found ourselves behind in both games.

“It’s something we want to look at and we need to try and start faster, with the energy and the level of performance we saw at the start of the second half. We need to try and extend that and that needs to be over longer periods, ultimately over 90 minutes. We’re trying to look at longer spells of dominance and bringing it all together, but we know in any game that the opposition will have spells and we need to try and make ours longer than theirs.”

Johnnie also spoke about a change to the training schedule, which currently runs over four days in a row – from Tuesday to Friday – and how he and his coaching staff are looking at tweaks here and there to try and improve matters.

“I just felt it allowed us to maybe get some better work in during the week,” said Johnnie. “It allows more recovery after the game at the weekend. You get a real good four days then to get some solid work in without breaking the week up, which previously we had done with the Wednesday off.

“I just felt it was a different way of working. We were looking at different types of ways of getting stimulus out of the group, because results weren’t going our way. We’re constantly looking at that and reviewing the reasons why and trying to come up with solutions and that’s just one of them.”

For a detailed round-up of team news ahead of the match at Walsall, join Tim Maynard in the Physio’s room below, via the link to our official YouTube channel.