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Ricardo Santos reckons this weekend’s tricky trip to Gillingham will be a litmus test of Wanderers’ play-off prospects.
Ian Evatt’s side remain seven points adrift of the top six as they prepare for a long journey to Priestfield, and the club skipper knows only another run of victories like the one they managed in February will help them bridge the gap.
Gillingham have improved under new boss Neil Harris and Santos has warned they will be no pushover on home turf.
But after the disappointment of last weekend’s defeat at MK Dons, the defender sees a battle against the Gills as a perfect way to shake-off any blues.
“I think it will be a scrappy game like the one at Burton, so we need to roll up our sleeves and do whatever we can do to get three points,” he told The Bolton News.
“We have been through this before. We lost that game at Burton but we jumped straight up again and beat AFC Wimbledon 4-0, so we are capable of doing it. We can’t be disappointed, we will just stick together and keep going to the very end.”
Wanderers drew two apiece with Gillingham at the UniBol in October, with Kyle Dempsey on the scoresheet for the Kent club.
Now wearing Bolton colours, Dempsey will be part of a squad which has only sampled defeat twice in their last 11 games, scoring at least once on every occasion.
The blank in Milton Keynes came as a frustration to Santos but he refuses to believe it will affect the team’s momentum.
“We can’t forget that we had a really good month,” he said. “It was only two defeats from nine, I think, so we are still in a good position. We need to keep it going.
“We will believe until the last game of the season. We know we can’t lose many more, or even draw them, but we go out every game to get three points and we always will.”
Wanderers could climb into ninth with a positive result at Gillingham, who will themselves be looking to climb out of the relegation zone for the first time since they lost 1-0 to Portsmouth in November.
Santos believes the team has a stronger mentality than it did earlier in the campaign, which gives him hope that they will not give up on chasing a top six spot.
“Before February we weren’t really getting wins, I don’t think we were looking like ourselves, and we did well to get where we are,” he said. “Right now, we still believe we can get to where we want.
“But we know that we don’t have a lot of games left. It will take another big run of games, a lot of hard work, but we can do it.”
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