Marcus Bignot wants to cap a ‘challenging week’ for Chester with victory against Dagenham and Redbridge.

The Blues have come through back-to-back away trips to London with crucial draws at Bromley (1-1) and Leyton Orient (2-2) and currently lie three points adrift of safety in 21st spot, but their weekend plans were thrown up in the air after a nightmare 10-hour journey back from Orient, arriving back in Chester at 8.30am Wednesday morning.

With the title-chasing Daggers in town on Saturday (12.30pm), ‘what a week it would be’ is the message from the 43-year-old boss ahead of the visit of John Still’s men.

“We’ve now got a chance to turn two decent points on the road into great points, that’s key to the hunger and desire of this group for Saturday,” he said.

“It’s been a challenging week, it was always going to be given our resources, we don’t have the luxury of staying overnight.

“In terms of how we prepare for football matches it has shown where we are, but I'm not for one minute trying to make excuses, it’s the situation we’re in.

“I think people and supporters can now see the challenges facing this football club both on and off the pitch and it takes a certain type of player with a strong personality to come through two tough away trips like that.

“Of course, some fans may be wondering why I wasn’t more disappointed on Tuesday night, but given the number of injuries, suspensions we’re dealing with, the reality is that was a good point and my players have been a credit to their club.

“What a week it would be now if we could go and top that off with three points against Dagenham.”

Bignot, who welcomes back Paul Turnbull from suspension but is likely to be without Ryan Astles, gave the players an extra day’s recovery on Thursday after their mammoth journey and hopes the rest will have done them good.

“It’s been a weird week to say the least,” he continued.

“It was challenging to begin with but the events on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning mean we don’t get back to Chester until 8.30am.

“You’ve got players sleeping on the coach, it’s not ideal. But we have a group who really take on board information very quickly.

“Rest is more important than training sometimes and we felt it will benefit the group to have the extra day’s rest.

“Thursday is our game preparation day, so we’ll lose a bit of that ahead of Dagenham, but the rest is crucial especially ahead of an early kick-off.”