WREXHAM boss Brian Little is expecting another tough test tonight as the Dragons continue their first campaign outside of the Football League.
Following a 5-0 mauling of Stevenage Borough on Saturday in their first ever game in the Blue Square Premier, Wrexham travel to Yorkshire to take on York City at KitKat Crescent.
But while Dragons fans will be on a high after their victory over Borough – the team regarded as the bookmakers’ favourites pre-season – Little is a lot more grounded and insists nothing can be taken for granted.
“I think the Stevenage game was a great result for us,” said Little. “But it wasn’t an easy game, and if I’m being honest I don’t think there are any easy games for us in this league.
“I think there are going to be goals scored in this league when you look at it, teams seem to have a good mentality about going out and trying to win matches.
“But looking at York it is certainly a tough prospect, definitely a tough game for us. They are up there in terms of the tougher games in this league, and we will find out a little bit more about ourselves after the game. We’ve had some good results ourselves and we backed that up on Saturday with another good result. Hopefully we can prove to do that again on the road at York.”
While Little was delighted following the 5-0 win over Borough on Saturday, he doubted it was going to be more of the same come tonight.
On Saturday for long periods of the match Borough were on top, but while they lacked any kind of cutting edge in front of goal, the Dragons cut loose in the second half to wrap up victory with goals from Jefferson Louis, Shaun Whalley, Christian Smith and Marc Williams, all following Tom Kearney’s first-half opener.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better result than on Saturday,” added Little.
“But when we looked at it at the start of the season we knew we had a really tough start to the campaign. And we’ve still got some pretty tough fixtures to follow up very quickly.
“York are one of those sides that certainly myself and a lot of people in this division will have picked out for having a very good pre-season. They’ve had some good results and then started the season with a very good away win on Saturday, so I think we have to respect them and realise it’s going to be a challenge.”
And Little also continued to play down the significance of Saturday’s opening day victory. At the time he admitted it was somewhat of a freak result, saying that Borough had been on top for long periods of the game, and yesterday he again reiterated his stance.
He said: “We know we’ve got a difficult opening to the season, people might look at the result on Saturday and say ‘what’s he talking about?’, but I do think York, Rushden and Diamonds, Oxford and certainly Stevenage are still going to be up there.
“They are four games we knew we were going to start off with which were very tough in the opening two weeks.”
He added: “I hope we can now build on Saturday’s game, I don’t think we are going to win 5-0 again, in fact I’m pretty sure we’re not going to win 5-0 again, but if we can win and build on the performance then I will be very happy.”
Little will be forced into one change from the side that stuck five past Borough on Saturday with Levi Mackin missing out after being red-carded in the victory.
Mackin will be replaced by Smith, who came off the bench to find the back of the net, while youngster Neil Taylor will come back into contention among the substitutes.
