The Latics are placed third in the table, but the United boss knows his side are capable of getting a victory.
Alexander spoke to iFollow Iron to preview the match, and provided us with the latest team news.
ON TRAINING THIS WEEK…
GA: We had a behind-closed-doors reserve game on Monday for all the players that haven’t been playing. We needed that for those boys. They approached it really well and it was an excellent game for them.
ON THE WIGAN CONTEST…
GA: The thought process is to go and win a game of football. Our ambition and our focus never changes. I think we are quite consistent in that approach. I think that is why over the last couple of years we have won a lot of games because we always go with the intention to try and win. We know we cannot win every game, as we have seen recently. Saturday will be no different but we know it will be a tough test for us at Wigan. They are at the top end of the league and are an excellent team full of quality. Now more than ever, I feel it is about us and showing what we can do. The players are determined to do that. They have to play with the freedom to do that and take the challenge on.
ON IVAN TONEY…
GA: We are going to see how he is in training. He took part a little bit on Tuesday, so we have to see how he has recovered from that on his day off on Wednesday. We will speak to Ivan and judge him from our eyes as well to see if he is contention for Saturday. He came to me last Friday about playing on Saturday when he hadn’t even trained, which was fantastic from a mentality point of view. Last Friday I had to manage that because it wasn’t the right thing to do. If he trains the rest of this week, he gives himself the best chance.
ON LUKE WILLIAMS…
GA: Luke has had a scan. It is a lot better than we first thought. We thought he had done his hamstring again, but he has not. It is the scar tissue, that had formed over the last six or seven months from being injured, that tore, which obviously keeps him out for a few weeks. It is a good thing in the long run because it needed to get broken down anyway. Ideally, we would have tried to do that in the summer, but he should be fit again this season to try and participate, which is better than what we first feared. He had been training with us for two months and has played in a couple of reserve games. He is doing everything right, trained consistently, not missing a day, and then he had to come off after being on for 15 minutes. He was very upset and we were upset for him. Hopefully that news will have perked him up a bit.
ON LEE NOVAK, MURRAY WALLACE AND KYLE WOOTTON…
GA: Lee is not as good and hasn’t trained with us at all. His heel is still very sore. He won’t be available for the weekend and we have to keep our fingers crossed that it is not too long. For Murray, I think it was a little bit of cramp towards the bottom of his hamstring. He hasn’t trained this week, but I’m going to speak to Michael (McBride) to see if he can train. Kyle is back in full training now. He came on for 20 minutes in a reserve game we had the other day, which was good. Kyle’s injury has been going on since August and then he went away on loan where he was stop start there and then he came back injured.
ON JORDAN CLARKE AND MARNICK VERMIJL…
GA: Jordan has trained a couple of days this week, but he is still not up to his full speed. That will come with more training days and more confidence in his hamstring. Marnick is not out there yet. His rehab has plateaued out a bit. He really improved quite quickly at the start, but then it slowed up.
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