"WE WANT SOME MORE WINS, SIMPLE AS THAT": MATT TAYLOR PREVIEWS OLDHAM CLASH

Featured Image Credit - Sports Mole

Exeter City welcome the visit of Oldham Athletic to St James Park this Saturday, with the aim of stretching their unbeaten run to 14 games.

After some gruelling away matches, the Grecians now have back-to-back home fixtures where they have a 100% winning record since the start of October, but Matt Taylor insists neither game will be straight-forward.

“Our home form has been strong but we’re against two strong teams who are going to come to the Park and try and take something from the game,” said Taylor.

The first team to challenge City at SJP are Oldham who currently sit in 20th place due to some poor early-season results, but the Latics have beaten some of the better teams in League Two, making it impossible to know what to expect.

“Quite a difficult team to prepare for if I’m being brutally honest, been a little bit inconsistent and had some pretty disappointing results this season.

“But they’ve got some dangerous players who on their day can cause an awful lot of problems and they’ve beaten some good teams,” said Taylor.

Out of the 13 games without defeat, five of them have been draws which is largely why City are only just bordering outside the automatic promotion places, and although it’s a nice feeling to be unbeaten, Taylor admits that winning has to be the priority.

“We want more wins, it’s as simple as that, you want to remain unbeaten but you want to have wins to show for it and that’s one thing where we’ve just fallen short of recently, especially away from home, so it’s something we’re trying to address,” said Taylor.

The emergency loan of Jokull Andresson has been extended for another seven days as Jonny Maxted and Lewis Ward still face a few more weeks out, City now also face a few more injury problems from games over the last week.

“Ben Seymour has picked up a hamstring strain after his goal from Tuesday night, we’ve also got the two impacts from last week Tom (Parkes) and Josh (Key), they’re trying their hardest to be available for this weekend but Saturday may be too soon,” said Taylor.

Although the injuries to some important first team players are a significant blow for the Grecians, it gives the youth and players who are struggling to get a look in the first team a great opportunity.

Taylor said: “We saw how effective Ben was playing on the shoulder, that’s why it’s so disappointing that he picked up that injury but with him out and Fish (Alex Fisher) still questionable, Nicky (Ajose) is next in line in relation to that."

“Jordan Dyer will be on the bench for us at the weekend and Alex Hartridge performed well again the other night and with the injuries to Tom and Josh in our backline everyone needs to be available, they’ve just got to keep performing and if they do get an opportunity, they’ve got to take it.”

Regardless of the injury problems in the squad, the Grecians have more than enough firepower to dispatch of a struggling Oldham side at St James Park this coming Saturday and extend their impressive unbeaten streak.