Rotherham United midfielder Shaun MacDonald believes he and his teammates have nothing to fear as they look to consolidate their place in the Sky Bet Championship.
The 32-year-old stressed that there is the ability and belief in the squad to go on and have a successful season in the second tier.
The Millers travel to St. Andrew’s on Saturday to take on Aitor Karanka’s Birmingham City and MacDonald is well aware of the challenge that Blues will pose.
“They have a very experienced manager who has been there and done it. As you say there are no easy games so we’ll go down there and hopefully show our strengths and come out on top,” MacDonald told www.themillers.co.uk.
“I think Saturday’s game against Millwall was a bit of an eye opener for some of the lads who haven’t played in this league before and showed them that there’s nothing to fear.
“We need to concentrate on ourselves, stick to our strengths and I’m sure if we do that we will cause teams problems.
“I think we’ve got two strong teams of 11 so there’s places up for grabs at the moment. It’s up to us who have the shirt at the moment to keep our place and those who aren’t in the team are chomping at the bit to get in.”
The former Wales international has worked himself into the starting 11 after enjoying a good pre-season, but despite starting the campaign strongly, MacDonald insisted that he is not taking his place in the side for granted.
“I feel I had a good pre-season and that was something I wanted to get under my belt as it was a bit stop start for me last year,” MacDonald added.
“This has put me in good stead and I’ve started the season well. I don’t take that for granted because I need to carry on performing and the team needs to keep up the standards as well.
“There’s a lot of competition for places and we need to keep fighting for them.”