EXPERIENCED midfielder Junior English says Worcester City must show “massive improvement” when they take on Sutton Coldfield at Coles Lane tonight (7.45pm).

City’s preparations for the new season suffered an almighty setback when they lost 2-0 to Redditch United in the semi-final of the Worcestershire FA Senior Cup in midweek.

English, who joined Worcester from Solihull Moors earlier this summer, admitted his new side “would not win a game” in Vanarama National League North if they continued to play like that.

Having missed out on the chance of playing in tomorrow’s final, City have set up a fixture against Sutton Coldfield who had been due to face Redditch.

English said the encounter against the Evo-Stik Northern Premier League side provided an opportunity for players to prove they are worthy to play for the Blue and Whites.

“The management are not going to accept the kind of performance we produced on Tuesday night,” he said.

“We have got to work a lot harder and the gaffer (Carl Heeley) and Snapper (John Snape) have drummed that into us.

“If you don’t, you won’t be here, so it is a case of knuckling down in training and taking that into the next game.

“But we need to show massive improvement against Sutton Coldfield.

“The National League North is an unforgiving league and if we play like we did against Redditch we won’t win a game.

“It showed a lot of players where they need to be if they want to be in this team, so we need to rectify our mistakes for the next game.”

English, who played the full 90 minutes of the cup tie, said Heeley felt City were “lethargic” as soon as they turned up at Stourport Swifts to play Redditch.

“Carl came into the changing room after the game and said the warm up wasn’t right and that carried on into the game,” English said.

“We were way off the mark and we deservedly lost.”

Despite the blow, the 30-year-old believed City had shown promising signs in their previous pre-season games.

“In the first game against Stourport we were just getting to know everyone, but I think we played well in the second half against Stratford,” he added.

“Obviously it was always going to be hard against Aston Villa, but even then we worked hard against a full-time outfit who had just come down from the Premier League.

“But we went down two levels against Redditch. We probably took the game for granted.

“It is good it happened in pre-season and we need to improve.”