WITH the way our season is going at the moment people are starting to ask me if this is my most difficult time as a football manager.

It's a fair question, but I'd have to say no.

There were difficult times when I was at Swansea before it all kicked into gear, so I wouldn't make a particular big thing out of what we're currently experiencing at Kidderminster.

I can handle it. I know what football's about and I haven't come across anything this season that I haven't seen before.

So I can deal with it and I hope that everybody else around Aggborough can deal with it as well.

Obviously, it was disappointing to lose at Carlisle on Saturday, particularly as there had been a little glimmer of hope after the games we had played prior to the match.

The result is obviously the most important thing in any game, but apart from that I thought our performance at Carlisle was lack-lustre.

You always hope for an improvement on the previous league display, so there's a big question mark now over our consistency.

In the first 10 minutes we looked bright and in the last 25 minutes, which you expect if you are losing 1-0, we pushed men forward. That provided one or two half chances but the performance was disappointing.

I don't know, but maybe sometimes we set our sights a little bit too high with talk about getting into the play-offs and being nearer the top than we are.

Perhaps we have just got to be a bit more realistic and realise that we are in a division where we are struggling to cope on and off the field with the demands. But we stayed up last season and we've certainly got to make sure we stay up again.

We must just take one game at a time with every point we get being precious and going towards us being in the Third Division when we kick off next year.

Our goal scoring problem, of course, is well known. If you don't score goals you can't win and again on Saturday, in terms of troubling their goalkeeper, I think he's made just one save in the second-half. That's disappointing.

But, despite the result, there were plus points. Eric Nixon did what he had to and made a couple of good saves and Adie Smith played well in the first-half.

Obviously, when things are as they are you can get downhearted, but we came in yesterday morning for training and we tried to be bright. It went well and the players worked very hard, but we have got to be able to take what we do on the training ground into games.

We've also got to remember why we play football -- because we enjoy it.

Okay, it's not going great for us and sometimes it's difficult to enjoy it but you really have to stick your chest out and do your best.

It's down to hard work and nothing else. If we work our socks off and get beaten in the next 32 league games then there's not a lot people can say because everybody has tried as hard as they possibly can.

And if the players do that tonight against York there's no reason why we can't get back to winning ways.