9:00am Wednesday 10th February 2010
FOUR home games in nine days have the potential to define our season at Worcester City.
Woking, Braintree Town, Havant and Waterlooville and Newport County all visit St George’s Lane between this Saturday and Monday, February 22.
They are absolutely crucial because we only have 16 games left so we need wins out of these matches.
We have to take points from them and can’t afford to continue being beaten.
It is important to get back to keeping clean sheets because, although we are scoring goals, we are conceding too many.
There will be changes in personnel because I cannot allow this club to keep throwing away winning situations time and again.
However, my hands are tied to a certain degree because there are 11 contracted players at the club who tend to be the higher earners.
But I have to do something and if I can’t get the players out who I want to leave they will be working very hard to earn what they are paid.
It’s not going to be easy for them. Players have got away with too much in training in the past and that’s going to change.
I am not prepared to let people have a jolly and, if they don’t do things right, they will not be at the club.
That said, there have been positives to take from the 3-2 defeats against Havant and Waterlooville last weekend and Kidderminster Harriers on Monday night.
I thought the performance was generally good against Havant but it was littered with individual errors.
We also played extremely well in the first-half of the Worcestershire FA Senior Cup semi-final with Kidderminster.
Gary Walker was excellent in midfield again.
You can never question his work-rate and commitment and players like him are worth their weight in gold.
I also thought Alfie Carter looked a threat every time he had the ball playing up-front alongside Rob Elvins.
It seemed to give him a lot more space.
But I think there were more negatives because the second-half performance was as bad as I have ever seen.
Also, when things are not going well for you, it seems as if the whole world is against you.
To lose Tom Kemp, Graham Ward and Elvins to injury against Harriers messed up our plans.
Now we have to look forward to Saturday’s Blue Square South match against Woking at the Lane but, at the moment, it’s hard to say how many players I will have available because of injury.
The worst-case scenario is I could be without five players and then we have a game against Braintree 48 hours later, but that’s football and we have to get on with it.
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