Exeter City manager Matt Taylor did not play down the significance of Exeter City's League two clash with Bury this weekend.

The Grecians slipped out of the top seven following the midweek results - MK Dons' 1-0 win at Newport saw them climb from eighth to fourth in a congested League Two - but they can close the gap on third-placed Bury to three points with victory at St James Park on Saturday.

This is what the manager had to say ahead of the game...

On injury and illness...

There are a few bumps and bruises and we might have to make a couple of changes from the team that played at Carlisle. But hopefully, we will have Dean Moxey and Lee Holmes avaiilable; Lee Holmes missed out through personal reasons last week and Dean missed out through an injury he picked up the weke before.

Hopefully they will be fit. In terms of how training has gone this week, we may have lost a couple to injury, but we will assess that in the next couple of days.

On issues this season...

I am not complaining because all teams have the illnesses and injuries at once, transfer windows and clauses in contracts. There’s things you can prepare for and things you can’t and you just have to prepare off the back of that.

We’ve still done enough training this week. We are still fit enough to see what we can get out of the Bury game.

We are looking at the Bury game as a big game for ourselves. It’s a mark of where we are at as a team. We have played two promotion candidates in the last couple of weeks and performed pretty well. We want to do the same against Bury.

On City’s form and Bury...

I think when you look at our two losses, anyone that was at the Grimsby game will remember what sort of game that was and then it was fine margins at Newport.

It’s been close in the last ten games. We haven’t blown any teams away and we have always competed – and we will do for the remainder of the season as well – but Bury are a fantastic team.

There is a reason why they are in the top three places at the moment and they can hurt teams at will really, they have really good attacking players.

We are on our home patch, we are at the Park and in good form, like I said, the players are feeling good about themselves after a couple of good performances and are in good form, so it’s all to play for.

I think it will be a really good game of football with two good teams, good attacking teams and hopefully the pitch will hold up to some good passing football as well.

On the St James Park pitch...

I know it got a bit of criticism in the last couple of weeks, but it’s our home pitch and we like playing there. Our home form has generally been good, not just this season, but for a number of seasons now and we need that for the remaining 15 games.

Certain aspects of weather conditions play a part in any game. We have to enjoy playing at the Park, regardless of what state the pitch is in, and we have been really unlucky again this season with weather on Saturday afternoons at the Park, but that’s just the way football is sometimes.

Credit to the ground staff. I have mentioned them time and time again in the past and the work they did the day before the MK game, in terms of clearing the pitches (at the training ground) meant they might have sacrificed a bit of time on the (St James Park) pitch to help us train on the Friday.

That’s what we do at the club. We work hard for each other and the ground staff here are limited to a certain budget and that is just the way the club is.

That is not a problem in any way and we can’t complain about it, but we have to make our home pitch our patch. We will lose games along the way, but there has to be a right way to lose at home.

On what’s clicked for Lee Martin...

I think it’s a combination of things. It’ll be confidence, a rhythm he is in, his family moving to the area full-time and a run of games as well.

We knew he was a good player at the start of the season and we were in such good form that we couldn’t quite find a position for him to nail down, but we have moved him centrally and then part of a front three in the last few weeks.

His energy is second to none, it really is. He covers every blade of grass on that pitch but I still want more from him in terms of end product, but that will come because he is a seriously good player.

He has been our talisman for the last ten games or so and he’s a great personality, which is one of the reasons why I signed him. He's a great personality to have around the place and you need those characters because it is not always going to be straight forward.

He motivates the players and he trains so well, so I am pleased with the business we did back in the summer. Sometimes, you don’t have the start you might have envisaged, or you might want at the time,  but he certainly has a place at this club.

He has fought for his place and cemented his place in the team. He was captain at Gillingham, so he has those leadership qualities. He's not an elder statesman, he’s the other side of 30, but he’s a player that’s so full of energy.

It was before the Crewe game that I said I wanted the team to go out and play with energy and if you are going to do that, then Lee Martin plays. In the last ten games or so, he’s been excellent for us.