KEVIN Tully is remaining confident that Winsford United will beat the drop.

The manager has noted an improvement in his side over the last week, although two more defeats, at Colwyn Bay and at home to Gainsborough Trinity, have kept Blues firmly planted at the bottom of the UniBond Premier.

Saturday's 2-1 home defeat, however, was the closest Winsford have got to getting a point in their run of four straight league defeats since Tully took charge.

"If we can get two or three wins we're back in the picture," said Tully. "Other results have gone for us and the teams above aren't picking points up.

"We started to create chances on Saturday and should have got something out of that. The pleasing thing was we got stronger and started getting to them. We weren't lambs to the slaughter.

"We kept going for 90 minutes and I could see the players were starting to believe in themselves, unlike the week before against Blyth.

"We also started to create chances, which we hadn't been doing before, and if Paul Pomford had scored with a chance just before the break it would have been a completely different game.

"There are 30 games left and a lot of points to play for. Other teams won't suddenly start picking points up, everyone is taking points off everyone else. We need to catch them up and we can do that if we can be consistent."

Consistency, however, isn't a word that can be used to describe Tully's team selection since becoming manager. Paul Pomford, from Darlington, and Lee Harley, from Colwyn Bay, were the latest additions to the swelling squad to make their debuts against Gainsborough.

Tully has defended the sweeping weekly changes and will add further players to the ranks.

He said: "We have another couple coming in next week. I don't want to change three or four players every week, I do want the squad to settle down and it will.

"But the changes have been forced with silly little things keeping players out. Paul Rushton and Mike Turner haven't even played a full game and they're already both injured."

One forced change was in the goalkeeping positon where Chris Knowles has returned from Tamworth in place of Ray Newland, who was unavailable for the Gainsborough match due to work commitments.

Mark Powell returned from injury at right back on Saturday and Mark Bailey could also be in line for a recall after being unable to make the last two games.

Despite being on the transfer list, Lee Coathup has forced his way back into the side at left back in place of the injured David Lloyd.

Meanwhile, David Mayes has ended his short stay at Winsford United by signing for Bamber Bridge.

Blues have a weekend off while most of the UniBond Premier are in FA Cup action, but return to league business with a testing home match against Hyde United on Tuesday (7.30pm).

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.