Lincoln City manager Danny Cowley says his side are confident of continuing their good form away from home against fellow promotion hopefuls Dover Athletic.
The Imps have only lost one away game so far this season. However, Cowley admitted his side have “lived, slept, drunk and eaten Dover” this week in preparation.
“All of our focus has been on them,” said Cowley. “We know Dover are a good team. They finished fifth in this division.”
“They’ve had lots of very good results at home, they’ve got a clear way of playing and they’ve got a group that they’ve had together for quite a while now.”
“Obviously they’ve had good continuity in that respect and it’ll be a tough game but it’ll be a good game for us.”
Cowley was careful to avoid focusing purely on Dover’s in-form striker Ricky Miller, the second highest scoring player in the league.
Miller has been linked with a move to Sincil Bank in recent weeks but Cowley said that his side need to focus on all of Dover’s squad.
“Ricky Miller is a good footballer,” the City boss said. “He’s a very good striker at this level but they’ve got other forwards.”
“We’re very aware of Dover’s attacking threat and I think we’re going to need to be at our best if we’re going to stop them.”
“So if we want to be successful on Saturday it will be about stopping Ricky Miller but also the other forwards that Dover have.”
Cowley also described how he aims to use a combination of analysis and unpredictability to gain an advantage on their opponents this weekend.
“It’s always about looking at their strategy, looking at their strengths, looking at the profile of their players and where our match-ups are,” he said.
“They play three high up the pitch and ask a lot of questions of you in direct play so we are clear on what we need to do to be able to try to stop them and the training during the week is just to try and get the players in certain habits.”
Lincoln will travel down to London today to train at West Ham’s facilities prior to their game this weekend thanks to the connections of goalkeeping coach, Jimmy Walker.
Cowley said: “We always train the day before. That’s part of our preparation so it’s always trying to find somewhere en-route to train.”
“It’s great, particularly for the young players because the young players can see what could be available to them if they’re willing to work hard and continue to improve and develop.”
Ahead of tomorrow’s encounter, Cowley revealed that striker Macauley Bonne was given the all clear to return to training following the head injury he picked up against Barrow last weekend.
However, Cowley is waiting to see how it develops before considering him for this weekend’s game:“He did some light training today so we’ll see how he responds and make a decision from there.”