Fleetwood Town defender Ashley Eastham spoke to the media ahead of Tuesday's match against AFC Wimbledon, and knows his side need to be fully focused when they visit the capital.
Eastham has made 31 appearance in all competitions this season, scoring just the one goal in the 4-0 win away at Doncaster last October. The vice-captain has been a regular in Joey Barton’s side and will look to feature once again on Tuesday, despite receiving a cut after a clash with Rochdale forward Calvin Andrew.
The 27-year-old spoke about the clash against Wally Downes’ side, the last meeting at Kingsmeadow, and the way his side have been playing in the attacking positions, and when they have the ball.
Here are the best quotes from Ash Eastham’s interview…
On the match against AFC Wimbledon…
“AFC Wimbledon are another team that are below us and they’ve got one over on us twice this season, and it’s something we really want to put right. We were really disappointed about getting knocked out of the FA Cup in the manner that we did, and we’re going to go down there on Monday to prepare properly for Tuesday night’s game.
“It will be important to be really focused because we’re not a million miles from results coming. On Saturday I felt the performance was worthy of a result, especially first half, and as a group we showed how we want to do things going forward.
“We move on now after Rochhdale as I’m glad we got something out of the game. We clearly showed in the second half what we can do as it was tough for us with ten men, but we hung on for a point and we move to Wimbledon now."
On the last meeting at Kingsmeadow…
“This is one that sticks in the memories as it was basically a swimming pool and not a football pitch. I don’t know how it wasn’t called off but it was an important game of the season for us because it pretty much kind of got us to safety. It really was a massive win for us.
“We went on a bit of a run under John Sheridan at the time, but it’s another game Tuesday that we want to win as we don’t want teams below us making up ground. We would ideally be fighting towards the top of the table, but right now we can focus on the objective of leaving teams below as we don’t want to be getting dragged down into that.”
On the attack threat for Town going into the match…
“I thought our first half performance (against Rochdale) was brilliant, and I was really pleased with the way Nadders [Ashley Nadesan], Paddy [Madden] and Wes [Burns] played.
“Ashley Nadesan was superb, and he has been brilliant since he has come back and I thought we showed them a composed style of our play; which was pleasing as we’ve worked on it all week.
“We aren’t just flipping the ball behind the opposition, we are actually spending phases of the play on the ball by working it across the pitch. We showed that with our chances where we could’ve been a couple of goals to the good at half-time, but I still felt we were comfortable even when we were down to ten men, and we just need to build on that against a physical side in Wimbledon.”