County And Glovers Set The Stage As BT Sport Head For Edgeley Park

The pair both had EFL aspirations at the start of the campaign - it's played out with differing fortunes.

Forget play-off talk. New Stockport County boss Simon Rusk is eyeing an improvement to their home form first and foremost, even if his Edgeley Park bow couldn’t have gone much worse.

After their thumping defeat of Woking, Sutton ensured the honeymoon period was cut short before it even got going on Tuesday night.

It doesn’t get any easier. Next up, only one of the league’s in-form sides live on national television.

Scared? No chance. Rusk is hoping the very mention of Edgeley Park will be something other sides start to fear.

“I think we’ve got to make this a place that we love playing and a place that teams don’t want to come to,” he told the club’s media after Tuesday’s defeat.

“I’m confident we can do that. It’s one of those nights tonight, we were excellent on Saturday at home. We’ve just got to dust ourselves down.

“I think we moved the ball really well and got in some really dangerous areas and perhaps didn’t have the clinical edge we had at Woking.

“Nonetheless, I thought some of the build-up play was good. We’ve got to prepare and go again. We need to keep everyone as fresh as possible.”

It wasn’t long ago Darren Sarll might have been expecting to be replaced himself.

At the start of December, Yeovil were rock bottom of the table without a single win from their opening nine outings.

Since then, five wins from seven haven’t exactly propelled them up the table – but it’s amazing how four places can make such a big difference.

Five points from the drop zone and the play-offs aren’t a million miles away.

The secret? Firepower. And lots of it. Joe Quigley’s brace against Dover last time out had him top of the club’s goalscoring chart.

But Rhys Murphy and Ruben Reid might have something to say about it.

“He [Joe Quigley] isn’t half a handful. Those two centre-halves will go home with a bit of a headache from him and Ruben Reid.

“I was disappointed for Joe that he didn’t get his hat-trick. But the pleasing bit leading up to it was how sharp Murphy looked. His touch was aggressive, he was on the move and now he knows there’s high competition in our ranks.

“I thought Ruben led the line well. Some of his hold-up play he also makes it look easy. There’s defenders trying to kick lumps out of him, but he just brings the ball down.

“I thought all three of them were excellent.”