HAVING the weekend off gave me the chance to watch England play both football and rugby - but it also allowed City's players to rest and recuperate in readiness for Saturday's game with Southport.

And giving the players chance to rest and get over their injuries and niggles seems to have worked.

At training on Tuesday there wasn't anyone in the treatment room and I think that must have been the first time that has happened this season.

Mark Danks and Graham Ward are nearing full fitness once more, Shabir Khan is coming along nicely, although Saturday may just come too soon for him and Adam Burley was out running for the first time in seven weeks since injuring his back.

Having the weekend off also gave Mark, Graham and Adam the chance to go and see Lee Noble, the reserve team physio at Manchester City, and they have all come back confident about there injury prospects.

The only drawback about having no match was that we couldn't build on the performance we put in at Boston.

How that will affect us I won't know until we play Southport.

At the moment, I feel that we need three wins out of our next five games to really push for those play-offs places and I firmly believe that we have the squad here that is capable of doing that.

The standard of football in Blue Square North this year has improved and there will be three or four teams you can guarantee will be up there come April. But if we can get everyone fit and playing consistently then we can sneak one of those play-off places.

Consistency has been one of our problems this season and that has been frustrating.

But until recently we have not had specialist players playing in the key areas of centre-forward, centre-midfield and centre-half.

We now have got a specialist centre-half in Patrece Liburd and Ryan Clarke has converted to the position very well.

In recent weeks we have tightened up at the back so there cannot be any more excuses.

We have got specialist players in the key areas and we must reflect that on the pitch.

Saturday will be a tough game. Southport are in third place and they are level on points with Kettering - just three points behind leaders Harrogate.

They are a team I expected to be up there at the end of the season but, if we can play like we did at Boston, then I know we can match them.

After Saturday's game we face Hucknall before having another enforced weekend off and that is a blow. We were supposed to be playing Nuneaton Borough, but they are still involved in the FA Cup.

The club had looked at arranging a home game with Burscough, but they are now playing Alfreton Town, so that left us with either Kettering or Hyde away.

With the way those two sides are playing it is probably not a good idea to play them just at the moment.