MARK Cooper is looking forward to returning to the County Ground after a five-game road trip.

It’s been almost exactly a month since Town sent Sheffield United packing from Wiltshire having handed out a 5-2 defeat. Town’s five away games have yielded mostly good results, with three wins, a draw and a defeat, in that time.

However Town’s passing play has come under increasing pressure away from home as teams look to harry their visitors. Town will be expected to be more assertive in front of their own fans when they face Rochdale tonight.

Cooper thinks his players will be more at ease at the County Ground is hoping they find a repeat performance of their win against the Blades last month.

“It seems when you play at home you have a bit more time, we get the crowd behind us and get a little bit more relaxed,” Cooper told the Advertiser.

“We’re looking forward to playing at home it seems a long to Sheffield United. If we can get anything like that performance it should be one to look forward to.

“(Rochdale) will come and have a go. They’ve got a brilliant away record, scored a lot of goals on the road, played some brilliant football. (Keith Hill) is a very clever manager and I fully expect them to come and have a go at us tomorrow.

“Rochdale will be able to watch our game from Saturday and I’m sure they’ll see what they think is the right way to play against us.

“They might drop off, they might press, I’m sure Keith will be concentrating on his own style, concentrating on what they do. They’ve got a real definitive style of play themselves, which is good to watch.

“If you try and press and stay against us that means there’s space behind them somewhere. We have to exploit that where there weakness is.”

As well as preparing his side to play in their style, Cooper has also had to deal with teams making rafts of changes specifically to counter Town’s play. Yeovil for example made eight changes to the team that lost the week before.

“Every week when we play or when we go away from home there’s at least four or five changes to from the team that we’re playing to their team from the week before. They change their style and their personnel to try and combat us and that’s a great compliment to the players.

“That’s something that they’re going to have to live, something that they’re going to have to get better at, dealing with teams are going to focus purely on stopping them trying to play their football. They’ve got to embrace it and getter better, they’re only going to get more of it.”