Langley aiming to help Blyth Spartans bounce back against Warrington Town

Blyth Spartans goalkeeper Dan Langley insisted his team-mates remain in a positive frame of mind ahead of Saturday’s home game with Warrington Town.

After putting together a strong run of form to take themselves within sight of the National League North play-off places, Jon Shaw’s men fell to a narrow home defeat against Scarborough Athletic in midweek as on-loan Gateshead striker Aidan Rutledge got the only goal of the game at Croft Park.

Despite that loss, Spartans head into their third meeting of the campaign with Warrington still sat just five points shy of the top seven and with plenty to play for throughout what has already been a season of notable improvement. Although he admitted his side were left ‘deflated’ by their defeat against the Seadogs, on-loan keeper Langley stressed the Spartans squad are already fully focused on returning to winning wins when they host Warrington on Saturday afternoon.

He told The Gazette: “The manager just said to us not to be deflated after Tuesday’s games because we have dominated the team that are third in the league for 90 minutes, which is true and I think we probably deserved a draw. They’ve had two or three chances, maybe they should have scored two, but we did well against them and it felt like we could have kept playing and playing and we just wouldn’t have scored because it was just one of those nights.

“You can’t fault the lads, it’s the first time we haven’t scored in six games and the lads at the top end of the pitch have been on fire for us.  It’s just one of those things, we won’t let our heads drop, we will go in on Saturday, play the same way and hopefully the result and performance will take care of themselves.”

Spartans manager Shaw could hand a start to striker JJ Hooper after he made an appearance as a substitute in Tuesday’s defeat but JJ O’Donnell remains on the sidelines with a shoulder injury.  Alex Mitchell, Joe Oliver and Harry Arnison also remain unavailable as they make their way back from their respective injuries.