9:00am Wednesday 17th February 2010
THERE are plenty of reasons to be positive as Worcester City prepare for two more crucial games in 48 hours.
Having defeated Woking 3-2 at the weekend and lost by the same score to Braintree on Monday, we welcome Havant and Waterlooville to St George’s Lane on Saturday and Newport County 48 hours later.
I was disappointed with the coutcome at Havant and Waterlooville 10 days ago because three individual errors led to their goals. We also missed chances and should have comfortably won the game.
We now have the chance to put that right and get some more points on the board.
Nobody will expect us to win against Newport next Monday but we were unlucky to lose at their place on New Year’s Day. We feel we can compete with the better sides in the league and can give them a good game.
They are important matches and ones I believe we can take points from.
I was bitterly disappointed after the Braintree match because the two performances over the weekend were very good but there were too many individual errors.
That’s disappointing. I felt we should have got at least a point against Braintree and if we had taken six points out of the two games nobody could have argued.
Yet despite mixed results, there are lots of encouraging things to come out of the two matches. If we can compete like that in every game, then I am quite confident we will be nowhere near relegation.
But there are 14 games to go so we have to repeat that level of performance until the end of the season.
I am a bit surprised we have started conceding goals as that was our main strength. We have got to build up the confidence of the defence and, if we can do things better defensively as a team, we won’t lose many games because we are scoring plenty of goals.
I have brought in three new players in the last week in Jack Durrant, Josh Emery and Aaron Farrell.
Jack and Josh are both young lads and it will take them time to adapt but they have acquitted themselves well and are playing in their natural positions so that helps the balance of the side.
I think they have strengthened the squad overall and I am looking for big contributions from them.
I have asked Aaron to do a slightly different role than he is used to because we feel we can use his pace by getting him out wide. He got a goal on Monday, along with Josh, and that was positive.
The match also saw Gary Walker make his 100th ap-pearance for the club. You know what you are going to get from Gary week in, week out — he’ll never let you down and it’s a nice little milestone for him. I hope there’s many more to come.
Meanwhile, I would like to thank Pinches Transport, the club’s main sponsors, for their generosity in helping to cover the cost of a player’s wages. We now have one extra in the squad and, to-gether with some fans, the company have chipped in to make sure it can be afforded.
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