Stevenage face five games to force their way into the League One play-offs - and that may mean gambling it all.

With five games to go, Boro find themselves three points behind Lincoln City and Oxford United and with an inferior goal difference on the Imps.

That makes the equation simple for the boss, and he knows that sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate.

"Win all five and it gives us a real chance," he said.

"Of course, it's going to be tough, we know it is, it's tough at the start of the season, so we can only concentrate and focus on one game at a time.  

"I've got far too much respect for Gary and everyone at Exeter to think we are just going to go down there and win. 

"If we think that, we’ll leave ourselves open and they are good enough to hurt you if you’re trying to get to a certain part of a game. 

"But we are at a stage in the season where we have to win some football matches, so maybe it's not [about getting to the 70th minute]. 

"We didn't wait till 70 minutes at Charlton. We changed it in my mind on 30, 35 and we [actually] changed it at half-time. 

"It'll probably be a similar process. We certainly need to be in the game around half-time and we then have to be prepared to lose.

"If you're not prepared to lose, you're not trying to win in my opinion. 

"We left ourselves man for man at the back against Charlton and we had a lot of forward attacking players and players deliberately staying high up the pitch to try and get us a goal. 

"That didn't come at The Valley but it might come at Exeter."

Stevenage head to the west country on the back of five draws and two defeats from their last seven games.

Critically they have only managed three goals in that spell, scored in just two of the games.

However, the same sequence has also brought four clean sheets and Evans knows both ends of the pitch will be important in the run-in.

The boss said: "We delivered our 19th clean sheet of the season [in the league] at The Valley so statistically, defending wise, we've been outstanding. 

"It helps of course when Piergianni comes back in because that reinforces and cements us a little bit. 

"It’s fair to say we've not been productive in front of goal so when that happens, you go back on the training ground and you work hard and you work smart.  

"And you have to believe, if we continue to play as we've been doing and making the chances we've made, the ball will hit the net. 

"The one thing we need is to win some games to get involved in this play-off campaign at the end of the season and therefore we need to score some goals. 

"Jamie Reid, who is our protagonist in front of goal, is a stunning finisher. We could train every day of the week and he’d always be a stunning goal scorer. 

"But all the best strikers are. I listened to Alan Shearer where he went 9 or 10 games without scoring and people were doubting him and then up he pops – goal, goal, goal. 

"We’ve got every confidence that if we make a chance on Saturday and it falls to Jamie, then he'll score. 

"There are reasons why [others] haven’t scored. If we look at our attacking set-pieces, Carl Piergianni gets assaulted in the opposition box every game he plays, he gets manhandled and we get nothing for it. 

"By his own admission, he’ll say he should have scored at Charlton when he does get free from a set play. 

"But we just have to make sure that first and foremost we keep that solid base that always gives you a chance. 

"If we took the two big chances that come over the bank holiday, Ben Thompson against Bolton and Jamie at Charlton, we could have been sitting here in a totally different position, cementing ourselves right in that play-off group. 

"We're not so we need to find a way to get back in and that's find a way to win a game."