King’s Lynn Town take a break from their National League North endeavours when they travel to Stourbridge in the second round of the FA Trophy – CHRIS LAKEY reports
Adam Lakeland is looking for his Linnets side to put a cup run together.
It was Lynn’s failure in the FA Cup that effectively cost predecessor Mark Hughes his job - and Lakeland is determined to make up for it in the FA Trophy.
The first hurdle comes away to Stourbridge on Saturday afternoon.
“I think it's good for us now to have a bit of a different focus,” said Lakeland.
“We can put the league to bed for a week and the Trophy, obviously a good competition that you don't have to win too many games to get into like the business end of it. It's a competition we want to do well in.
“As a club we didn't do well at all in the FA Cup and hopefully we can put that right and have a bit of a run in in the Trophy.”
Lakeland has fielded the same starting XI and same bench for the last three National League North games, including for Tuesday’s thrilling win over leaders Scunthorpe United. It’s a policy which has worked well, but it is tempting for some managers to use cup competitions to put minutes into the legs of ‘fringe players’ whilst easing the loads of others.
For Lakeland, the thinking behind keeping the same line-up is simple.
“You can't expect consistency of results if you've got inconsistent team selection,” he said after the midweek win.
“We've kind of played a little bit of a different system today. We've flipped between a couple of systems and the lads executed it tremendously well, but you know they're putting it in on the pitch because they obviously feel like they're going in the right direction and they want to be a part of it.
“And they ultimately want to keep the shirts because they know that just around the corner, we've got four, five or six really good players coming back that are going to be chomping at the bit to be a part of it, so it certainly helps.
“And I think as a manager you get to a point where you trust the team, you trust players, you know what you're going to get from your players and I think at the minute I know what I'm going to get out of that 11 that's on the pitch.
“They're all working incredibly hard. Whatever kind of plan we go into a game with, I trust them to execute it and we've had some good performances of late. So it's up to them to just keep on doing that and obviously the lads coming off the bench, continuing to just work hard and make an impact when they're on the pitch.”
Lakeland has Jordan Ponticelli – who has been putting in the hard yards before recent games and would appear to be closest to a return – Josh Barrett, Tom Clifford and Tommy Hughes sidelined as well as keeper Tommy Dixon-Hodge.
Stourbridge play in the Southern League Premier Central Division where they are 17th in the table after seven games without a win.
Lakeland, though, won’t under-estimate them, despite tucking Scunthorpe’s scalp under his arm on Tuesday.
“I just hope the players draw real confidence from this performance and result,” he said. “We're a level headed group anyway. There's no way we're going to think we've made it because we've won one game but we have to draw confidence from it and take it into the next game.”
