Matt Taylor is excited to return to The Memorial Stadium for Bristol Rovers' Sky Bet League One clash against Wigan Athletic.
The Gas have been strong at home in the third tier this campaign, beating Northampton Town and Cambridge United with back-to-back clean sheets.
Rovers played in one of only three games in the league last weekend, with Ruel Sotiriou netting his first goal for the club in a 2-1 defeat to promotion hopefuls Barnsley.
Taylor discussed the Pirates' home form, previewed the upcoming fixture against Wigan and delivered an injury update.
BACK AT THE MEMORIAL STADIUM
“I’m really excited to be back at The Memorial Stadium,” he said. “The weather has been strange this week; we hope that doesn’t affect it too much. The pitch is in great condition, and I’m sure there will be speed to the pitch and the surface.
“The opposition will make it a quick game, so I’m expecting an entertaining football match. Hopefully, there will be chances for both sides, and hopefully, we will take ours, and they won’t take theirs.
“A team like Wigan hopefully adds bums on seats because we haven’t been at The Mem for a couple of weeks.”
BARNSLEY REACTION
“There didn’t need to be too much of a reaction,” said Taylor. “When you put the game into context, we were not a million miles away but there are still areas to work on which we try and do daily regardless of the result.
“This is a developing team and we’re going to have to coach them an awful lot to understand certain moments of the game. There was a lot to like about our team at Barnsley, but the result wasn’t what we were aiming for, so we came away a little bit hurt."
KAMIL CONTEH AND MICHAEL FORBES RETURN
"I’ve not seen Kamil yet and Michael was on a recovery day after getting two good games in terms of minutes," he said. "I watched him on Friday night against England. It was a good defensive display.
"Kamil has been here, there and everywhere. I’m yet to see where he is physically and mentally because he flew through the night and only got back this morning. It’ll probably be a late decision about Kamil and what capacity we see him in.
"It’s great that he’s going away and getting international recognition, but as a manager, you miss him during the internationals."
WIGAN ATHLETIC PREVIEW
“They are a former Premier League team with a fantastic group of players and are coached well,” said the boss. “They’ve not had the start that they would have liked but picked up a good result against Crawley and were a little bit unfortunate against some of the stronger opponents.
“They recruited well and finished the window strongly. But we’re at home and I want the talking points to be about our performance, style and group of players. We have to try and dictate the running in our home games and put the opposition under pressure.
"They are a clean footballing team and probably the best we’ve faced at The Mem so far this season.”
INJURY NEWS
“There has been a bit of sickness, one of the players was really ill after the game,” said Taylor. “He’s not trained until today.
"Another player had a scan on Tuesday, so it’s been a little bit disjointed for a couple. It’s never straightforward in football because there’s always things going on, but generally the group seem to be in a good place physically.”
