Forest Green Rovers boss Steve Cotterill maintains that the unbeaten run that the side are currently on could be an important factor come the end of the season ahead of a trip to Dagenham & Redbridge on Tuesday night.

Cotterill's side currently boast a 17-game unbeaten run in the National League, something that Cotterill did with his Cheltenham side back in the 1997/98 season. Rovers did go 19 games unbeaten under Rob Edwards in their title-winning season back in 2022.

“It is not so much surpassing it; it is about building on what we have got," Cotterill said. "This isn’t a Forest Green against Cheltenham scenario.

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"I am a Cheltonian and I was born there, I was very proud of the job I did at Cheltenham and so far, I am not making a bad fist of what I am doing at Forest Green, so they are two separate entities, they just happen to be in the same county.

"It is not a competition about can we get any more or anything like that. There is no competition there for me, we are just trying to do well with the unbeaten run that we are on and to try and keep it that way and keep going because the longer we keep going, the better it will be for us.”

Former Rovers loanee Lewis Young is now the permanent manager of the Daggers having been the interim boss in the two sides’ last meeting.

On whether much will have changed in their opponent’s playing style, Cotterill said: “I think Dagenham & Redbridge have always been a decent team anyway, I wouldn’t want to say that one manager has done something better the other. I am not sure I would really want to comment on what they are doing, whether they are doing something better, or something worse because I just feel as though that is not my business.”

There is a chance that Forest Green may have to be patient in tomorrow’s game with Dagenham having sat the behind the ball for large parts of their last meeting.

“You never know how the game is going to pan out,” Cotterill said on how the game might unfold. “You can do as much work as you want on the training ground and you can be in total control of a game, you only have to look at Saturday (1-0 defeat to Oxford City).

"When you are in total control of the game and all of a sudden there is one clearance, one corner and it can end up in the back of your net. We are normally pretty good at set-plays, we have been very good throughout the season, maybe because there were a few changes in our setup defensively that caused us a problem.”

Rovers last met Dagenham at the beginning of January in a 1-1 draw at home which saw a late goal from Josh Rees cancelled out in the last minute of the game by Ryan Inniss.

“At the end of the day, when you are a goal down and things aren’t going right for you, if you haven’t got a good team spirit and you haven’t got a couple of subs from the bench who might be able to change it for you, don’t give in. If you give in, you are done, so don’t give in. Until the referee blows the whistle, don’t give in and we haven’t done that.

"To try and get that into the mentality of a team is incredibly difficult, when you think about what has happened in the last two years, the turnaround is massive. We don’t think we have any divine right to win any game especially after the history of the last couple of years.

"We have never gone into it thinking we are going to win, we go into the game to be positive and to try to win every game. That won’t change, we are fine where we are and just a little bit of luck on some occasions would be handy.”

On the last meeting between the two sides and what the Daggers are capable of, Cotterill said: “I think what they have done is sat in and got organised, then obviously when the game opens up around the 70th minute, it becomes a bit ding dong and they score a goal, certainly in the last game.

"Funnily enough, their game against York was like that a little bit at the weekend, they made it very difficult for York and got a goal from a set-play.

"They have worked a lot on restarts, whenever there are free-kicks it’ll go into your box, corners are the same.

"Those things we need to be wary of and they have got a few individuals that can give teams trouble in this league. It is about us focusing on ourselves and getting back to where we are at our best.”

Rovers sit third in the table after 28 games played ahead of the trip to Dagenham on Tuesday night, their opponents are in 16th on 32 points.