Stevenage will lock horns with former manager Dino Maamria when they head to Burton Albion - and current Boro boss Steve Evans is anticipating a tough contest against "a dangerous opponent".

Maamria was in charge at the Lamex for just shy of 18 months after being appointed on March 2018 to replace Darren Sarll.

After a spell at Oldham Athletic, he ended up at Burton, leading them to a 15th-placed finish last time out.

They are currently 17th but Evans is expecting a difficult afternoon on Saturday.

He said: "I know it will be tough and I know it will be competitive and I know their team will be really organised. 

"I watched the full rerun of their [EFL Trophy] game against Wrexham on Tuesday and they are capable of beating anyone on their day. 

"[Winning] at Wrexham was a fantastic result and not enough credit will be given because it's in a competition that's not League One. 

"If it had been a league game, everyone would have been saying it was the result of the week. 

"We just need to go there, work as hard as we can and play as well as we have away from home in recent times.  

"We've been very good and we need to produce a very good performance to add one or three to our points tally. 

"We still have a points target as a minimum we need to get to and we are nowhere near it yet. 

"We know the quality of player they have been able to assemble. You don’t go and sign the likes of Cole Stockton, we all know what [wage] he was rumoured to be commanding, or others that we tried to chat to in the summer. 

"We were unable to match them and I’m not saying they have an outrageously [high budget], they're like us in that they are one of the more confined clubs in terms of spend. 

"But they have good players and when you've got really good players, you are a dangerous opponent." 

They travel to the Midlands though with a full squad to choose from for arguably the first time this season.

That will create some issues during the selection meeting.

"Yeah, we’ve had a full squad," said Evans. "We’ve had Dan Sweeney and Harry Anderson in and we had a full game here on Tuesday amongst the whole squad where we spoke about preparation and we spoke about competition for places. 

"And there were some performances there that stood out and said I want to be playing on Saturday. 

"You have to balance that with our 10 match unbeaten run that is so hard to achieve in League One. 

"I’ll sit down with the staff after training [on Friday]. We'll have an 18 in mind but we'll pick down and fine-tune the 11. 

"And we want that 11 to give us everything they've got and we ask no more than that."