Cambridge United players challenged to show they are an ‘angry team’ when they take on Sheffield Wednesday

Head coach Mark Bonner has called upon his Cambridge United players to show they are an ‘angry team’ when they take on Sheffield Wednesday at the Abbey Stadium on Saturday.

The U’s go into the encounter on a run of five defeats from their last six Sky Bet League One fixtures – the most recent of which came at the hands of Bristol Rovers last weekend.

And Bonner is hoping that his 14th-placed U’s will use that frustration as fuel to produce a positive performance against one of the division’s biggest clubs.

“They’ve got some lovely options in their side. Very often they play with a front two and obviously they’ve got some real presence at the top of the pitch, hard working, good runners and a physical presence at crosses,” said Bonner, who has ruled midfielder Adam May out of this weekend’s encounter.

“They’ve got some excellent crossers of the ball and in midfield they’ve got a lot of options that can create chances for them. We’ve seen that from when we’ve played them and we’ve seen that this season as well.

“Everyone else always talks about Barry Bannan and what a strong player he is, but whilst he might be the best player in the league, they’ve also got a lot of options in their team that can cause you problems.

“We have to talk through that, discuss where they’re strong and what problems they’re going to cause us – and they will because that’s the way the game works.

“But we also have to go into the game believing that we are an angry team from last weekend and we have to show that in our own performance. And we have to make sure we hit the level that we can because I know on our day we’ve got players that can cause any team in this league problems.

“It’s about giving the players confidence and the platform to say ‘go on, go and be you and do what you do. Don’t judge confidence on a seven-day cycle, you either believe in yourself or you don’t, get out there and let’s go and show what we can do’.

“That’s our aim this weekend, we’ve got to try and do that the best we can, knowing that we’re playing against a well organised team that have got really good quality and huge expectation on them.

“(We’ll) see if we can get a really good performance, but we’ll need energy in the stadium, we’ll need energy in the team and everybody getting behind the players and driving us on because this is tough. It’s a tough league to play in, we need everybody to understand that and know how committed we’ve got to be to be able to compete.”

Wednesday travel to Cambridgeshire sitting third in the table on a run of three victories from their last four outings.