Despite Exeter battering us earlier in the season, i didn't actually think they looked very good, i just through we were awful and the fact we were so bad and they still couldn't put us away spoke volumes about them.
They wont be trying to physically bully us which is our weakness, they play a style that we are more comfortable at defending against. They want to play it out from the back but i don't think their defenders are the most gifted on the ball and I don't think they have a proper target man to go long, so if we can press them high, man for man we've got a very good chance of forcing mistakes and smothering their play.
We know when a team struggles to win long balls how crippling a high press can be from having it done to us so often this season. We used to do that all the time at this level under previous managers and most teams struggle against it, so hopefully we can start to do that more often rather than sitting back and letting teams play.
Looking at their stats, they are in pretty good form with 3 wins and 1 loss in their last 4 and 4 wins and 2 draws in their last 7.
Their top scorer Ryan Tevitt was only on loan and has been recalled by his parent club. So their next top scorer is a wing back Mitchell who only has 3 goals.
They are the 3rd worst attack in the league with only 21 goals from 31 games. They are the 6th worst defence in the league with 42 conceded from 31 but it seems that when they score first they hang on to win nearly 80% of the time, while if they concede first they lose 75% of the time, so the first goal is often the decider in most of their games. They also have a habit of conceding late goals in either half with 10 of the 20 first half goals and 15 of the 22 second half goals conceded in the last 15 mins of each half. About a quarter of the goals they have conceded have been set pieces, so it is a game where it's probably worth getting balls in rather than going short.
Looking at any notable names in their squad, they've got a lot of experience in their back line with Aimson, Hartridge and Sweeney and Mitchell at wing / wing back back is their top scorer. In midfield retired Latics player David Perkins has been registered as a player due to injuries but i don't think he's played yet. Yanic is also there but doesn't appear to be a regular starter. This past window they have signed def mid Ryan Woods from Hull and Mo Eisa from MK both were good players in the past but not seen much of either recently.
For us with Matt Smith suspended i expect that Scott Smith will probably return to the side, i think Maloney favours him even if Shaw is fit.
I think Sessegon also drops out for Jordan Jones to start.
Other than that you'd not expect any more changes but we know Maloney loves to change the team around from game to game, so you never know what he'll do.
This is one of those games where even though they come into this game on a good run if we turn up and perform well we should be too strong for them. But we know we haven't always turned up this season. Hopefully we'll try and replicate all of the good things we did from our last game but it's Wigan so you never know.