LEE Hooper is targeting further ‘progression’ at Malvern Town following a dominant 4-0 victory against Helston Athletic.
Goals from Jack Watts, Lewis Spurrier, Charlie Johnson and Joe Bullock earned the Hillsiders a fourth straight league win against Helston at the HDAnywhere Community Stadium.
The result means Malvern sit eighth in the Southern League Division One South table, three points outside of the play-off places.
However, Hillsiders co-manager Hooper is refusing to look too far ahead with his side on their best run of form of the season.
Hooper said: “All we can do is concentrate on ourselves and concentrate on winning, taking it game-by-game and week-by-week and see where that takes us.
“If we’re in the [play-off] mix with four or five games to go then we can really start concentrating on it.
“If we concentrate on it now, we’ve done that before and we’ve ended up looking over our shoulder after a few bad results and we’re in a relegation battle.
“I don’t think we’ve got to worry over our shoulder any more.
“We’ve got to keep trying to win every game and if we can finish above where we did last year then that’s good and that’s progression and that’s what we’re looking for as a football club.
“The results we’re getting, the way we’re playing, the way we’re defending and the way we’re doing stuff as a team, we’ve got to have confidence and belief.
“I’m really pleased, three clean sheets on the bounce now, some really well-worked goals and well-deserved.
“We were the only team in the game, it was a really pleasing result.
“The lads have really turned it around from the little poor run we had at Christmas.
“In training we’ve gone back to basics, we’ve worked hard, stripped it all back and gone again and it’s working, the lads are playing some really good free-flowing football.
“Let’s just take it game by game because this league is very close, you can quite easily go on a losing streak of four as we’ve gone on a winning streak of four.
“It’s a very tight league, there’s no gimme’s, there’s no team you turn up to and think we should win today, you’ve really got to be at it.
“If there’s ever such a thing as a bogey team, I don’t think we’ve beat Bideford since we’ve come up to Step Four.
“We have to go there with real confidence and put that thing of them being a bogey team away and hopefully get a result there.”
Malvern broke the deadlock on 33 minutes when Watts finished a ball across the box at the back post despite the best efforts of a Helston defender.
And the home side doubled their lead just two minutes later as Spurrier finished on the rebound after Kyle Moore kept out Sam Clark’s superb volley.
The Hillsiders were rampant at the end of the first period and extended their lead on 41 minutes as Johnson glanced Watts’ cross from the left across goal into the bottom right corner.
Substitute Bullock completed the scoring seven minutes from time when Bullock curled a shot into the left corner of the goal from Ryan Brunt’s lay off.
Malvern are next in action against Bideford AFC on Saturday, February 8 with kick-off at 3pm at the Sports Ground.
