Brehaut ready for tough test as Blues entertain title rivals
LEEK Town head into a huge top-of-the-table clash at home against Runcorn Linnets on Saturday with manager Josh Brehaut insisting that history between the two clubs is irrelevant.
There’s no doubt Runcorn have become a bogey side for the Blues having knocked them out of the last two Northern Premier League West Division play-off semifinals without ever having gone up themselves.
Then there is the last time the two teams met when Leek were thumped 5-0 away on November 14.
Leek have only won one of the last seven clashes between the clubs.
However, that’s the negatives dealt with.
Since that thrashing, Brehaut’s dominant side have gone unbeaten in 16 matches and won 14 of them while storming to the top of the league and opening up a 10-point gap which has since been reduced to nine.
Runcorn have overtaken Prescot Cables to nab second.
On this Saturday’s encounter, Brehaut maintained: “There’s not too much motivation around the 5-0 defeat. The 5-0 motivated us to get to where we are now.
“We don’t need to be overly concerned with what’s gone on. We have made amends for that by getting where we are.
“We’ve just got to do our very best to accept the responsibility of being in a fixture that’s first-versussecond and embracing that opportunity.
“We have just got to enjoy that challenge of being that team that’s earned the right to be shot at, and try and perform in an environment where there is a lot of people interested, not just from a spectator point of view, but also externally, people interested to see how that goes.
“We’ve got to try and enjoy that.”
He added: “I think as a club we have beaten them once in seven games and that was last season away.
“Psychology is interesting in football. But what has gone on
before makes no difference to our mindset and mentality to try and be better than them on Saturday.
“From our point of view the result won’t determine how far we’ve come.
“But the performance will and can do. We are in control of our performance, not the result.
“We have been involved in big games this season. We can’t forget we played teams in the FA Cup who were levels above us and we performed really well.
“We got the result against South Shields and not Fylde but the performance against
Fylde was good. It was again against Prescot [won 1-0]. Saturday is another opportunity to put in a really strong performance and show why we are the team that are top of the league.”
Leek won 3-1 at Hanley last weekend to maintain the nine-point advantage they have over Runcorn.
Blues fell behind early on, but then battled back with the league’s top scorer, Rob Stevenson, bagging a hat-trick to complete the turnaround for Brehaut’s men.
“I knew it had the potential to be a banana skin and it was a big win,” said Brehaut.
“They are very good at what they do.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for what they do. They have a very disciplined and organised shape out of possession and they then go and score after two minutes and you think, ‘flipping heck.’ They are probably the worst team to play against to give a goal head start to in that sense.
“What was most impressive was our emotional control. Their manager agreed. We didn’t get too flustered. We just stayed calm and trusted the process.
“It really helped to score two goals before half-time to go
in ahead. But we did that by staying calm and sticking to our principles. I was pleased how we managed that.
“The second half we had chances and could have put the game to bed way earlier than we did.
“We went into the last 15 minutes at 2-1 on tenterhooks a little bit. Until we got a third near the end it was nervy. I’m really pleased we came through that.
“I knew this game coming up at the weekend with a ninepoint gap was really important because it gives us that little bit of leeway if things don’t go as we’d like to go.”