MANAGER Paul Mann has said unless his players ‘man up’ and give their all for Ledbury Town they will risk dragging themselves into a relegation battle.
Town currently sit seven points above the drop zone after a woeful run of results, which stretches back to November when they claimed their last league victory.
Their poor form in Division One of the West Midlands Regional League included a 9-0 thrashing at the hands of fellow strugglers Hansworth United two weeks ago.
However, Mann said he was more unhappy with his side’s 3-0 defeat to Stone Old Alleynians at New Street on Saturday which extended their winless streak to ten.
“The 9-0 defeat was a disgrace only in terms of the fact I could not get the players to travel there, so we went up with just 11 players, including two 16-year-olds, so I haven’t lost too much sleep over that performance,” he said.
“But our showing against Stone was gutless. They didn’t turn up and when your confidence is low when we conceded the first goal you could see that the lads were starting to think they were going to loss.
“At the moment we can’t buy a goal, we look like we are going to concede every time somebody attacks us and unless there is a dramatic turnaround we will get pulled into the relegation battle.”
Mann said he was disappointed by the attitude of his players in recent weeks, but he said he hopes the threat of relegation will spur Ledbury on.
“I have never been relegated as a player or as a manager and it is not something I want on my CV,” he said. “But I am not a quitter and the club are saying they want me to see it through, so I will. But quite how these bunch of lads are going to turn things around now I am not sure.
“We have got six games left, four of them are at home, and if we play to our potential then we could quite comfortably get 10 or 12 points and end up in mid-table and everyone will say what was the worry.
“It merely requires the players to man up and to think to themselves we got ourselves into this situation. so now we need to get ourselves out of it.”