WORCESTERSHIRE first-team coach Alex Gidman admitted the quest for promotion is going to be hard and the team are not playing well enough.

The club have gone eight County Championship Division Two games without a win after letting an opportunity for victory slip in their 13-run loss to local rivals Gloucestershire at Cheltenham this week.

With four league games left at Northamptonshire and Sussex and at home to Glamorgan and Gloucestershire, the second-from-bottom County are desperate for a winning run to close the 37-point gap on the promoted top three.

Gidman said: “Firstly, promotion is going to be hard but in any sport when you play over a long period of time the league doesn’t lie.

“We are not playing well enough and haven’t over sustained periods of time. It’s been the same message for the last few weeks.

“We are not performing our skill for long enough and the need for that isn’t going to change until the format of the game dramatically changes which isn’t going to happen.

“We won two (Championship) games last year and two this year so far. Making improvements and being a more consistent team doesn’t happen overnight.”

But Gidman insisted: “We are making some cricketing decisions that we hope will benefit this club now and also in the next two or three years.

“It seems there has been a lot of expectation on a very small group of players to produce day in and day out which is unrealistic but also means other guys aren’t developing.

“We need to develop as a group, not just as one or two players. The whole team needs to be performing and that’s where we’ve been inconsistent.

“If you look back at the victories in red-ball cricket it’s generally been the same guys performing in those games.”

The County plunged from 181-5 and 229-7 to 232 all out while chasing 246 to win at Gloucestershire.

But Gidman said: “They (the players) are hurting after that and desperately trying.

“We tried to hang in there and take it as deep as possible but they just kept at us and it got harder to score on the wicket.

“We didn’t have quite enough batting skill in the end to get us over the line.

“In our last month in red-ball cricket we’ve played a lot of good cricket but sadly we are having hours or sessions which are not just average but really poor.

“It takes a long time to get that back. What is toughest about this fixture is we recognised we didn’t bowl particularly well on the second session of the first day and when you have a session like that it can take a long time to get back.

“We worked really hard for two days to get that back and into a position to win the game and unfortunately we didn’t quite have enough to see us over the line.

“We’ve got to get better at playing four days of cricket, not two and a half or three.

“The messages are very simple and clear. I know the guys are trying, the spirit is brilliant and we will continue to do a lot of work in improving how that happens.