The birthday boy speaks to RedTV

He told Dave Macdermid “We are going there 5-0 up and a lot of people will think the tie is over – but not us.

“We always knew from the start that this was going to be settled over two legs and two different matches. No two games are similar.

“We have got to go with the mindset that this is still 0-0 and be professional. We want to win the game as well as working on our fitness, as we are obviously still in the midst of pre-season.

“The fitness of the boys I think is excellent. We never really lost that much over the summer and Graham Kirk has done a great job to get us back up to speed so quickly. I think many of the boys put a lot of extra work in over the holiday period because the club were in Europe.

“The first leg was physical but not that bad. There was a couple of red cards which made the match look dirtier than it was, there was a couple of late tackles as well but we have got to put that to the back of our heads and go there hoping that it will be a clean game of football. I am sure it will be.

“There’s nothing we can do about how the opposition play. We have to just concentrate on our own performance.

“I know we have a good number of fans over at this game, many of whom have given up their summer holidays to come and watch the team in Latvia. I know many more have already booked up for Holland. I am not saying we will go out and win four or five nothing tomorrow but we owe it to the fans who have made the trip to put in a very professional performance and win the game.”

RedTV | to listen to the full interview please click here