Nothing to fear — Dickov

ATHLETIC manager Paul Dickov wants Southampton to be apprehensive about coming to Boundary Park

tomorrow night — and not the other way around.

A 2-0 home win over Swindon helped extinguish some of the burning pain from the recent derby defeat to Rochdale.

Three points gained from a fifth win on home soil lifted Athletic up to ninth in npower League One.

Saints were busy seeing off Premier League outfit Blackpool 2-0 in the third round of the FA Cup, which landed them a plum home tie in the next stage against Manchester United.

But despite manager Nigel Adkins presiding over four wins in a row, Dickov believes his men can be rightly confident about playing the game in the style of their choosing.

“We know Southampton will be up there at the end of the season,” said Dickov.

“What we have to do is go out there with the starting point being our performance against Swindon.

“They are on a fantastic run at the moment and we know what the dangers are.

“We will be looking at that, but we are the home team and with every team that comes here we want to impose ourselves.”

Dickov fielded four of his maximum five loan players in Saturday’s game (report on Pages 34-35), following the arrival of goalkeeper Ben Amos on a deal which runs until the end of the season.

The 20-year-old Manchester United stopper, who has previous experience out on loan at Peterborough and at Molde in Norway, kept a clean sheet on a debut in which he pulled off one excellent second-half stop from Matt Ritchie’s well-struck shot.

Amos replaced Dean Brill in the starting line-up and was joined by fellow loan stars Neal Trotman, Cedric Evina and Oumare Tounkara.

Evina has re-signed for the club on a month-long youth loan, a deal which exists outside of the usual 93-day limit on emergency loan deals.

Aidan White didn’t feature against Swindon due to an ankle injury and won’t play tomorrow night.

The winger is currently back with Leeds United and is likely to return to Athletic only when the injury has healed. The club hope to negotiate a deal which runs to the end of the season when the player is fit again, though Leeds are believed to be favour a month-long extension at this stage.




ATHLETIC will travel to MK Dons in a rearranged league game on Tuesday, February 22.



Tranmere Rovers visit Boundary Park in a fixture which will now be played on Sunday, March 27 (2pm kick-off), with Athletic officials moving the game to avoid a clash with the Euro 2012 qualifier between Wales and England the previous day.