Gladiators boss wants form to continue

[FF News]

Matlock Town boss Mark Hume wants to see his side carry their impressive February form into March.

The Gladiators posted an impressive run of form during February and that saw five league wins on the bounce and a Derbyshire Senior Cup semi final victory over Glossop North End.

Hume is confident that Matlock's hot run of form can carry on, despite what on paper looks to be a tougher set of fixtures during the coming month.The Matlock boss added that his side missing out on the NPL Premier Division Team Of the Month award, which went to new league leaders FC United of Manchester, who picked up six wins on the trot, is not a cause for argument, even though the Gladiators could have done absolutely nothing more to collect the accolade.

"Let's face it there's no easy games in this division and to be honest Nantwich at home last Saturday proved to be a harder game for us than going to Skelmersdale who were top at the time" said Hume.

"Whoever we play will provide tough opposition and it's not been easy playing the sides around us given the importance of the matches. I can't see why we can't carry on performing as we have been doing and collecting the points, provided that we continue to do the right things. We're not leaking massive amounts of goals and we're catching teams on the break and creating chances, so we're doing well."

"As for the team of there month I'm not the slightest bit bothered although I'm very pleased for Karl (Marginson) at FC United. It's not about me, it's us as a team. The objective has and will continue to be to keep Matlock Town up this season. I don't need awards, I just want to do the job I came to do."

The latest league win was by a 2-1 margin against Nantwich Town at the Autoworld Arena, a result which saw Matlock climb to fifteenth in the table. But in midweek came a timely reminder for Town that there is still plenty of work to do as fellow strugglers Witton Albion beat Stourbridge and Frickley Athletic picked up a useful point at Barwell.

"We played well in the first half and Nantwich didn't have a lot of answers then but their manager changed things at half time and by employing almost a 4-2-4 and going gung-ho, it nearly worked for them. Nantwich were on top for twenty or so minutes in the second half and although we were a bit slack for their goal, we were generally tight and in the end it was a good win.

But we did stop playing, Ted (Cribley) couldn't get hold of the ball and he's a lad that makes things happen for us, but overall we deserved it. Jamie (McDonagh) and Danny (Frost) had chances, 3-0 and the game would have been over, we didn't take them and at 2-0 a game can be tricky. We're better going at teams than protecting what we've got."

Meanwhile the Town chief says his "pop and crisps" comments after the win at Glossop were misunderstood.

"I wasn't referring to Glossop's league or Glossop FC, more the players and what went off. If the comments caused offence, I'm sorry, there was no disrespect intended to their club or their league."

Source: Matlock Town 

Source