Smallwood: We know Accrington will be looking for revenge over us
SKIPPER HAS WARNING FOR TIGERS
Accrington Stanley will be gunning for revenge tonight, when they host league leaders Hull City at the Wham Stadium, according to Tigers’ skipper Richie Smallwood. City returned to the top of League One a week ago with a comprehensive 3-0 win over John Coleman’s men at the KCOM Stadium, backing that up with a stunning 4-0 success at promotion-chasing Portsmouth on Saturday.
As the pair prepare to face off again, Smallwood has urged his team-mates to guard against complacency when the Tigers travel to Lancashire, and expect a fired-up Accy side desperate to topple the leaders.
“Absolutely, they’ll be at home so they’ll be fancying it,” Smallwood said when asked if the hosts will be seeking retribution.
“It will be a different test to what it was at the KCOM, they’ve got a lot of energy, similar to Portsmouth, they’re full of energy in midfield, and they run all over.
“We saw that in the first half on Tuesday night, we’ve got to be ready because we know what we’re up against.
“They’ll be looking for revenge, but we can’t let that happen – we’ve got to be on our game and if we’re on our game, there’s no reason why we can’t win.”
Smallwood played a pivotal role at the base of the City midfield on Saturday, delivering his best performance of the season to help Mccann’s men to a second successive clean sheet – their tenth of the campaign - and he says the shut-out gave the players as much pleasure as the four goals.
“We were obviously pleased with the number of goals we scored, but I think the most pleasing thing was another clean sheet,” the ex-blackburn man said.
“That has been a real positive for us, for the majority of the season so far. Some of our play in the second half was outstanding and, in many ways, it was a pleasure to stand back and watch.
“We’ve been pretty solid for the last four or five weeks and we’ve created our chances off the back of that and through our shape as well.
“It all seemed to come together and we were clinical. We’ve been critical of ourselves over the last few months for not being as clinical as we should have been.
“It has been good to have games like the Accrington and Portsmouth ones where we’ve managed to put a few chances away.”