Pressure comes from within – Duff

You don’t need to motivate players for games like this, insists Cheltenham boss

CHELTENHAM’S trip to League One heavyweights Sunderland this evening does not come without pressure, insists Robins boss Michael Duff.

While a visit to the former Premier League club appears a ‘free hit’ for the Whaddon Road side, Duff insists that all his players have their own expectations about performance – even in the context of it being a third long away trip in a week.

“It’s just a case of getting on with it,” Duff told his pre-match press conference. “There is no point moaning. The facts are we’ll have clocked up more than 1,000 miles this week. It’s a difficult journey, a difficult place to go, against a team at the top of the league, with maybe 25-30,000 supporters there, but enjoy the challenge. I seem to be saying that every week at the minute, but that’s where we are.

“We worked incredibly hard last year to get out of League Two, so it’s always going to be tougher because you are playing against a better quality of opposition, but it’s better for the players, playing in some nicer stadiums and the pitches are better.

All the things that come with it, but all those nice things make it harder.

“I don’t think anyone expects us to go up there and get anything out of the game, which is brilliant for us, but the pressure comes from within. You won’t need to motivate them (at Sunderland) because they’ll know.

“You shouldn’t have to get a player up for playing in front of 30,000 people, but we didn’t do anything well on Saturday (2-0 defeat at Wigan), and if we go up there (Sunderland) passive, hoping to get a result, we’ll get murdered.”