I’M looking forward to today’s game more than usual because it has been a very long time since we played at home.

Amazingly, you have to go back to October 26th for our last game at the Kassam Stadium in the league – a victory over Rochdale that seems like years ago.

That made it four 3-0 league wins from four successive home games so we were in fantastic form on our own ground and hopefully we can pick up where we left off today.

We will have a new goalkeeper in the squad with Jordan Archer joining us yesterday as a free agent.

We don’t know the full extent of Simon Eastwood’s injury yet, but hopefully he is back in a few weeks rather than anything longer-term.

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We just felt that we couldn’t risk only having one goalkeeper, Jack Stevens, at what is going to be the busiest time of the season.

We are in a fantastic position in the league, plus we have Manchester City in the Carabao Cup quarter-final coming up, so when we knew that Jordan was available it was an easy decision to make.

He has more than 200 games under his belt, has won promotion from this league and is a Scottish international as well.

Easty’s injury comes at a pretty bad time for us to be honest.

If you look at it, we have Easty, Cameron Brannagan, Ben Woodburn, George Thorne and Shandon Baptiste all out right now plus Alex Gorrin through suspension today.

Tell me a team in our division who wouldn’t want players like that in their side – and that’s not even mentioning Malachi Napa who is out long term.

You know how I am though, we don’t dwell on things like that and look at the positives.

You flip it on its head and there are not many sides who wouldn’t want to welcome those players back in January.

We expect a tough game today and I know that Sam Ricketts will be looking to do well at the club where it all started for him.

If you walk along the corridor from my office there are pictures of him and Dean Whitehead, who is also in the away dugout today, because they were both part of the academy sides here.

They went onto have long and distinguished playing careers and I am sure will do the same in management.

But hopefully today a return to our own home, with a loud and passionate home crowd, gives us the edge and helps us get all three points.

People keep asking me if our unbeaten run ended at Exeter on Wednesday night.

I don’t think it did really. We drew over 90 minutes and how do you lose if you don’t concede a goal?

I can see both sides of the argument, but ultimately it doesn’t matter too much.

Those games are gone, whatever the result, and although we were all hurt to go out of the competition, all we can do now is use it to try to ensure that we react in a positive fashion.

We rested well, have prepared properly and I’d love it if people were still asking if our unbeaten run is intact after today – because that means another positive result and definitely 11 unbeaten in the league!