Tranmere Rovers manager Micky Mellon believes his side must “keep moving forward” as the new Sky Bet League One season approaches.
Rovers were beaten 2-0 by Sky Bet Championship outfit Stoke City at Prenton Park on Saturday as second-half goals from Tommy Smith and Danny Batth earned Nathan Jones’ men victory.
The performance against the Potters proved a good work out for TRFC and Mellon feels Rovers have to take what they can from the pre-season fixture.
Mellon said: “We've got to get what we can out if it. Hard work, real graft and looking to improve all of the time.
“We have to try and keep moving things forward on all of the bits that we will be working against and keep trying to move the group forward on the things we will have to be good at.
“This is what these games are for, to be tested to the ultimate and for us to find out what we need to get better at and there’s no better place than out here against that quality of opposition.
“We’ll keep working hard and we have to keep it real and keep improving all the time and try and get better.”
Rovers return to the third tier in a fortnight as Rochdale visit the Wirral on Saturday 3rd August, and Scotsman Mellon knows coming up against higher opposition of Stoke’s calibre will stand his squad in good stead.
He added: “We want to find out more about what we want to work on, we knew Stoke were going to have players of high quality and we knew that we would have to work very hard to try and match them and their quality.
“We try and gain what we can out of it in order to try and make the team competitive for Rochdale on the opening day of the season.”
