Grays Preview

It’s Grays at home tonight and Boro are bang in form after an impressive couple of results on the road. It’s a far cry from the team from 12 months ago. Boro were struggling to get consistent results and as a result were stuck in mid table. It looked the same at the beginning of this campaign, but Boro have been hard to beat in recent weeks and their strong character has come through to pick up some vital points against Rushden & Mansfield.

The home side are without ex Grays defender Jon Ashton after he picked up an injury at the weekend at the Deva Stadium. It’s likely Michael Bostwick may drop back to defence or Mark Albrighton may come into the 11 and start alongside Mark Roberts. Of course Lawrie Wilson remains a long term absentee. Other than that it looks like we are at full strength for the visit of the Essex side.

Grays have another new manager in charge with former West Ham hero Julian Dicks taking over. If you look at their squad, they haven’t got a bad side. There are plenty of established players like Glenn Poole, Jamie Slabber, Fred Murray and Adriano Rigoglioso in the squad. The latter is likely to miss out through injury, while former Cambridge striker Lee McEvilly is also doubtful.

Dicks’ side find themselves languishing in the relegation zone after a recent run of poor results. They have lost their last 3 games, conceding 10 goals in the process. I am pretty confident that we can score some goals tonight too. The home fixture against Grays last season was one of the worst games I had ever seen and that is no joke. It was a freezing cold night and the football was dismal. It was all up in the air and to be honest had hit rock bottom. The good run of form last season started from that game.

“We know that not only do we want to win at home, we want to entertain. We want to play a good brand of football that people will want to come and watch. There will be 11 men trying to stop us earning three points, and 11 men on our side very purposefully going out and trying to win them. It’s all about what you do on the day.” Westley on aiming to entertain

It’s interesting to see that GW wants to entertain. In some ways it puts more pressure on him. If he didn’t say that then he could get away with winning games whichever way he wants, but he now has said he wants to do it in style and I can see that statement hitting him back in the face.

Whatever way we play tonight, I’m confident we’ll carry on our good form and get the 3 points. It almost feels like we are back to being confident about our game like the end of last season. There was a period last season where I felt we couldn’t lose. It’s taken a while to get that back this season, but I think it’s here now and the team is putting some good performances in and getting the results. Come on Boro!

Stevenage Squad

Ashley Bayes, Chris Day, Scott Laird, Ronnie Henry, Jon Ashton, Mark Roberts, Mark Albrighton, Eddie Odhiambo, Michael Bostwick, Stacy Long, David Bridges, Darren Murphy, Andy Drury, Joel Byrom, Mitchell Cole, Yemi Odubade, Lee Boylan, Charlie Griffin, Chris Beardsley

Prediction: Boro 3-0 Grays