The New Saints will be on the front foot for huge clash

The sides will meet again at the Deeside Stadium the following Saturday, May 1 – with the outcome of the two matches likely to go a long way towards deciding this season’s title race.

Saints and Nomads both currently have 66 points from 26 league games, with a matching record of 21 wins, three draws and two defeats.

TNS beat Nomads 1-0 in Oswestry in October, but were beaten 2-0 in December’s return fixture.

Anthony Limbrick has led Saints to victory in all four games in charge since being appointed as the club’s head coach earlier this month – and now he’s preparing to face Connah’s Quay for the first time.

Limbrick said: “When I first came in to take this job, there were 10 games to go and the target was to go into every game and try and win every game.

“You’d like to hope that you’ve got a chance of doing that. We have done so far, which has been great, but we’ll always look forward to winning the next game and when we’re at home and whenever you’re taking a TNS team, I think it’s important that you get in that mentality.

“That’s the mentality we’ll have going into this game on the weekend.

“We want to try and win the game, we’ll be on the front foot, we want to try and score goals obviously, keep the clean sheets that we have done.

“But no, there’s no doubt about it, we’ll be looking and trying to get on the front foot and try and win the game.”

Limbrick added he has been impressed with what he’s seen of Connah’s Quay.

“I’ve been really impressed with Connah’s Quay and what they’ve done over the previous seasons,” he said. “The way they play obviously is a very clear style of how they do it, very direct, very physical, and they do it very well.

“I’ve been very impressed with how organised they are, very good from set-plays, and they’re a real handful to play against in this league and can score plenty of goals but also be defensively tight too.

“I think that’s going to be a real challenge for us, there’s no doubt about that. We’re definitely a different style team and there’s different ways that you can win a game, that’s for sure, and they do that way really well, so we do have a lot of respect for them.”