AFC Telford United aiming to buck Blyth Spartans trend

The Bucks have already faced the Green Army twice this season and, on both occasions, things did not go to plan.

At the New Bucks Head in September, Blyth scored three times in the first half with replies from Marcus Dinanga and Elliot Newby proving too little too late.

Then at Croft Park in the FA Trophy in December, Dale Hopson’s 10th-minute penalty – after Jordan Lussey brought down Jarrett Rivers – saw the hosts advance.

Blyth, though, could well be there for the taking as they have lost their last six league games and their chances of reaching the play-offs seem pretty slim now.

Telford set up very defensively at Stockport County on Saturday, losing 1-0. They would have loved a point.

When asked if they would happily take a point from this one, Edwards said: “Look, there’s three at stake and with the position we’re in, we always want to try and win every game.

“There’s different ways of doing that. We’ll look at it, assess it.

“We did very well when we went up there in the FA Trophy – coped with the journey and were good that day. We know we can handle that.

“We want to try to win every game. It’ll be tough, but we’re capable.”

The Bucks are expected to freshen things up a little bit for this game after playing on Saturday – and last Thursday.

Kane Richards, Jordan Lussey, Bob Harris and Jordan Murphy missed out on the squad at Edgeley Park and it would not be surprising to see at least a couple of those return to the fold.

Dinanga and Newby were left on the bench and, having scored in the reverse fixture, are likely to return to the starting line-up.

The back four of Connor Johnson, Shane Sutton, Dom Smith and Ross White played well at the weekend and should all be fit enough to go again.

“We know what to expect. The most important thing is how we’ve recovered,” said Edwards.

“We’ll get another look at them and try to pick the right team to get us the result required.”

Blyth assistant Neal Hooks is hoping for a big response after they lost 2-0 to Chorley at the weekend.

“You hope there is a bit of fight in there,” he said.

“We’re still in a good position – there still is a chance of the play-offs but that window is kind of narrowing down.

“We probably need to string five wins together now to give us a chance to do that but when you’re playing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, it’s looking very unlikely.

“The disappointing thing is that we have been in there all season but we haven’t fully kicked on at the right time of the year when we needed to be scrapping 1-0s.”

He added: “Sometimes football doesn’t need to be pretty, you just need to get the result to get you over the line.

“Results have been going well for us at times at this stage of the season and you’d hope we would be the one to sneak in there and scrape a few a wins that would get us over the line.”