City boss Ord has decisions to make

 Source: The Journal

 DURHAM CITY boss Dickie Ord is weighing up the pros and cons of making changes to his line-up for tonight’s Durham County Challenge Cup tie against Sunderland RCA at New Ferens Park, writes JAMES HUNTER.

The Citizens go into the first-round clash on the back of a six-game winning streak in all competitions and Ord wants to keep that momentum going, with an FA Trophy tie against FC United of Manchester coming up this weekend.

But he is also aware of the need to give his squad players an outing, and possibly rest key men ahead of the FC United game.

“I haven’t decided whether to go down the road of making changes or not, as yet,” he said.

“I’ll either make wholesale changes or none at all.

“It’s a difficult one, though, because there are reasons for and against.

“On the one hand, we are on a great run of form and I don’t want to do anything that will risk that coming to an end.

“But I also have a responsibility to the squad players who travel up and down the country with us, often without seeing much action.

“We have a squad of 21 or 22 players and they need to get some match action so that when they are needed, they don’t come into the side cold.”

Ord has a full squad to pick from tonight, with defender Dan Madden available again after serving a two-match ban.

Durham’s winning run continued at the weekend as they came back from 3-0 down to win 4-3 against Mossley in the Evo-Stik First Division North.

And Ord wants his side to show the same fighting spirit in their cup games this week.

He said: “It was a terrific fightback from the lads at Mossley after we had conceded three bad goals.

“To come back from 3-0 down to win shows the spirit in the camp.

“I said last week that I wanted us to go into these two cup games on the back of six wins, and that’s what we will do.

“Obviously, all the attention has been on the FA Trophy tie against FC United of Manchester, but we have a big game against Sunderland to focus on first.

“We beat them in pre-season and they will be out for revenge. They play in the Northern League Division One and will see us as a scalp, so we have to make sure that we don’t slip up against them.”

by James Hunter, The Journal
Nov 1 2011