Forest Green boss Ian Burchnall wants his side to “embrace the spirit” of being underdogs ahead of Saturday’s clash with Wanderers.

Burchnall’s men are currently 22nd in the League One table, having won two of their opening 11 matches.

They suffered a 3-2 defeat against Burton in their last outing, with the winner coming in the second minute of stoppage time.

Burchnall is prepared for a tough test against the Whites and says Ian Evatt’s men have the quality to hurt teams in the final third.

He told Gloucestershire Live: “They’re great with the ball, they’re very calm, they’ve got good patterns of play, all three centre halves are comfortable.

“They’ve got quality up front, Dion Charles, [Jon Dadi] Bodvarsson, [Elias] Kachunga. They’ve got real quality in there.

“I think if you give them time and space, they can really hurt you with the ball.”

Forest Green were promoted last season, clinching the League Two title under then boss Rob Edwards.

Burchnall knows his side will have to get used to coming up against big clubs in the third tier but is embracing the challenge.

He added: “Everybody is aware of the size of some of the teams in this league and coming here, these are the quality of teams we want to pit ourselves against.

“But we know it’s always a massive challenge. They’ll bring a lot of supporters, but this is why we want to be in this league.

“We’ve just got to try to relax and understand that we are underdogs in these sorts of games and try to embrace that underdog spirit a lot more than maybe place bigger expectation on ourselves that we should just naturally go out and win this game.

“Of course, we want to win it, but we should try to embrace that spirit.”

Wanderers will be aiming to bounce back from Tuesday night’s late 1-0 defeat against Cheltenham Town.

Burchnall felt the Whites looked “disjointed” at times against the Robins and expects a reaction at the weekend.

“Cheltenham defended very well,” the manager explained. “Bolton made lots of changes, they looked a little bit disjointed as they changed quite a few players with systems and roles.

“Based on that, they’ll probably bring in some of the players that finished the game, so I think they’ll be very strong going forward in the next game.”