Richie Wellens, Salford City Manager

Salford City travel to newly promoted Barrow on Saturday afternoon as they look to put Wednesday night’s defeat to Carlisle firmly behind them.

Salford go into the match on a two-match losing run having being knocked out of the FA Cup by Newport last weekend which was followed up with a Skybet League Two defeat to Carlisle in midweek.

Salford’s manager Richie Wellens is expecting another challenging encounter away to Barrow on Saturday.

He said: “Every single game in this league if you don’t do the basics right then you will struggle, you only have to look at the game the other night, we didn’t do the basics right at Carlisle, we lose and then you look at the results, Mansfield who {were} second or third from bottom beat Cambridge who could have gone second in the division.

“So that’s the nature of what it is and we need to make sure that we just concentrate on us, we can only affect what we can do and I think the players have it in their locker to really up their game.”

On what he expects from Barrow in terms of their approach to the game on Saturday, Wellens said: “I’m expecting a good footballing team.

“{David Dunn’s} gone in there and they are playing some good football, I know they’ve not won many games but they have had a lot of draws in there as well, so a difficult place to go. I went to watch them last week when they played Wimbledon at home in the cup, they obviously got knocked out on penalties.

“Wimbledon a League One club went up there and didn’t manage to beat them in normal time so we need to make sure we are on our game and if we do that we’ll cause them huge problems like we’ve caused everybody problems when we get our game right.”

The match will have a limited amount of fans, as did Salford’s game away to Carslie on Wednesday and Wellens sees it as a positive thing for the game, despite it being an unfair advantage for those clubs in the lower tier regions who currently are the only clubs who are allowed any fans back.

He stated: “The nature of the world we live in at the moment it’s just positive to see people back in the ground, people are allowed to get out of their houses and enjoy other people’s company and actually support their local town, so it’s all positive.

“Is it an unfair advantage? Absolutely, of course, it is but there’s unfair advantages up and down the country, it is just the way it is.

“Fortunately, we can get our supporters in pretty quickly, so hopefully, the unfair advantages won’t last for long.”

Despite the defeat on Wednesday evening, Di’Shon Bernard scored his first senior goal with a well-taken header and Wellens has been very impressed with his progress.

He said: “Di’Shon’s been astounding, obviously he’s not paid to score goals but I have to say his defending, his composure for a young player.

“He is something we will look to take us to January and then we will look at his loan, {he’s a] very, very good young player with a lot of potential, so looking forward to continue to work with Di’Shon.”

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