We should be winning at home against Hyde, says Welling United boss Jamie Day

WELLING UNITED player-manager Jamie Day says his side have enough quality to avoid suffering an embarrassing defeat against Hyde on Tuesday night.

The Wings were held to a 1-1 draw by their Kent rivals Dartford on Friday night after Ross Lafayette’s penalty cancelled out James Stevenson’s opener – all inside the opening eighteen minutes at Park View Road.

The Wings are in fourteenth-place in the Skrill Premier with 35 points from 25 games, eleven points clear of the relegation zone.

Basement side Hyde collected their fourth point of the season yesterday when they came away from ten-man Southport with a 1-1 draw.

They took a first half lead through Scott Spencer and were 12 minutes away from securing their first league win of the season.

Hyde are 21 points adrift of safety and are destined to be relegated to Skrill North at the end of the season.

The worst side to previously grace the top flight of non-league football were Leigh RMI, who collected 18 points during the 2004-2005 season.

“Any footballer or any team wants to win games and whether you’re bottom of the league you play because you enjoy playing football and you’re proud to be a footballer,” said Day.

“I think they’ll come here and want to win the game and might still believe if they can get 15 wins between now and the end of the season, they could stay up so you look at it and go we should be winning at home against Hyde on Tuesday night.

“It’s not an easy game,” added Day. “We need to make sure the players look after themselves and if we do things right we’ve got enough in the team to win the game but it’s not as easy as that.

“Hopefully we can play better than we did on Friday night.

“It’s a home game and any home game we look to try to win so we need to play better than we did against Dartford. If we don’t do that it will end up being a scrappy game like Friday night and it can go either way.”

Reflecting on the disappointing Kent derby against second-from-bottom Dartford, central midfielder Day said: “We had one or two chances in the game. It lacked a bit of quality and I think it showed. Hopefully we’ve got all of that out of us and we can produce a better performance against Hyde.”

Day received a knock in the final seconds of the Dartford game when Conor McLaren cleared Mat Mitchel-King’s goalbound shot following a last-gasp corner and Day cleared the ball away before the full-time whistle blew.

“It’s no-one’s fault, the lad’s gone to shoot and he just caught the back of my knee,” revealed Day, who hobbled off the pitch.

“Hopefully it will be ok for Tuesday because we’re down to bare bones so no doubt I’ll have to look after myself and see how we are on Tuesday.”

If Day is forced to rejoin his coaching staff (Barry Ashby and Dean Frost) in the dug-out on Tuesday night, then he has players who can slot in midfield.

“Doug (Bergqvist) can play in midfield and we’re trying to develop him into a midfielder so no doubt we can push him in there if we need to and we’ve got Blaine (Hudson) who plays at the back so we should have enough cover.”

Day said he is targeting 50 points to maintain their Conference Premier status next season and knows what he’s looking for in the January transfer window.

“I think we need to bring one or two in going forward,” he added.

“We’re speaking to two or three people, we’re looking to bring in next week if we can providing on the wage and everything is right for the club, so hopefully we can do that because we need to add a couple of players in a week to ten days.”

Visit Welling United’s website: www.wellingunited.com
 
Welling United  v Hyde
Skrill Premier
Tuesday 14^th January 2014
Kick Off 7:45pm
At Park View Road, Welling, Kent DA16 1SY