Players have an air of quiet confidence (From Worcester News)

Players have an air of quiet confidence

9:00am Wednesday 31st March 2010 in Sport

Marc McGregor: Exprienced striker who has played in an FA Trophy final.

I AM not feeling the pressure as we prepare for two key games over the Easter weekend.

We visit Staines on Good Friday night and host Bath City on Monday, two teams chasing the Blue Square South play-offs so it’s going to be tough.

Together with Lewes’ results over the same period, it will define how important the match against the Rooks is at St George’s Lane the following Saturday.

Staines and Bath are just another two games of football but the lads all know the importance of them, they are not fools, and we need to get points over this weekend.

We are aware of the situation but there’s a quiet confidence about the players. I think we are playing quite well and haven’t got the results we deserved in the last two games against Maidenhead and St Albans.

This is not the first time I have been involved in a relegation scrap. In my youngers days at Alvechurch we seemed to be battling for our lives on the last day of every season.

Another time was in John Barton’s first season as manager at Worcester in 2000 when we got ourselves safe with about three or four games to go.

This is as close as it’s got for me but it’s no good panicking about it, we have got to stay calm and focused.

There is also a vast amount of experience within our squad. Marc McGregor has played in an FA Trophy final and Mark Clyde has figured in the Premier League for Wolves.

Mark and Graham Ward have both got honours at international level and Matt Birley has played in the Carling Cup and made one Premier League appearance for Birmingham City.

Added to that, we now have Shabir Khan back as well as Matt Dinsmore, Matt Birley and Marco Adaggio following his loan spell at Redditch United.

Today is also the deadline to register players so I have added Cheltenham Town youth striker Jake Lee to the squad.

Marco’s goal ratio at Redditch has been similar to what it was with us and I am looking for a response from him.

He’s got the ability, he’s a Worcester player and will be treated exactly the same as the others. The fact he’s been on loan doesn’t change anything.

If I’d known what was going to happen with players getting injured and not being available I wouldn’t have let him leave but you can’t dwell on that — you make decisions as you see them at the time. Hopefully, we have ridden the storm with injuries, suspensions and players being unavailable.

I would also like to say that Niels Eiriksson’s bike ride was taken into account in the decision to bring the Staines game forward.

The team were unanimous about playing on Friday but I was aware that Niels was cycling on the Saturday to raise money for the supporters’ trust.

Before I agreed to take the fixture, I contacted him to see if it would cause him a problem.

He was happy for us to change it so that allowed us to confirm.