Hall Road Rangers and FC Humber United face each other yet again as the sides contest a 3rd meeting of the season on Saturday at the Fairfax Plant Hire Stadium.
In the previous two encounters earlier in the campaign, Rangers picked up victories on both occasions.
Hall Road will aim to build on their 3-2 victory against Brigg Town last Saturday. Therefore, they come into this game full of confidence after toppling their 3rd placed opponents.
Contrastingly, FC Humber lie inside the relegation zone in the NCEL Division One table and are four points off safety. They’ve won four of their last 15 league games. This includes doing the double over Brigg Town and victories against Teversal FC and Shirebrook Town.
FC Humber have lost nine of their 16 home games.
The main attacking threats in FC Humber’s squad are Louis Blackwell, Szymon Czubik and Brandon Burke. Blackwell has 11 league goals, Czubik possesses a tally of ten goals in all competitions and Burke has nine league goals to his name. Eddie Wileman provides another potential danger for the Rangers defence having bagged seven league goals so far this campaign. In fact, David Haley’s side have scored 57 goals in total thus far.
On the other hand, they’ve conceded 112 goals.
There’s a former FC Humber player in Hall Road’s current squad. This is recent signing Aidan Smith as he made 16 appearances for FC Humber earlier this season.
Rangers joint boss Dave Ricardo is expecting an awkward test for his side against FC Humber and has also expressed his desire to finish the season well.
“I think they’re a bit of a wildcard to be fair and you never know. From the games and reports we hear from them, they’re always positive and they always have a good go at it which is full credit to them.
It’s down at Selby’s ground which, if the rain stays away, should be a decent enough surface. It’s a big, wide pitch so it should suit getting the ball down on the floor and playing.
We’ve just got to play on the front foot. We’ve been doing that in the last few games and we just haven’t been clinical enough.
We’ve got nine games left and you look to go for maximum points. If you can get that, it’s superb and then you just work your way down.
What I don’t want is to finish the season on a damp squib as it were. For me, knowing from when I was a player and as a manager, this stage of the season where you can’t go up and you can’t go down can be a little bit of a bad time.
Training’s important and making sure that it’s positive which we do and we’ve had some good sessions recently. The lads, to be fair, have bought into every one.
They’ve never jibbed it and have always put in 100% in training as well as the games. It’s a case of looking forward to end of season dos, but making sure we pick up the points between now and then.
As long as we limit the injuries, we’ll be fine” he said.
