Lancaster City manager’s thoughts as they return to action on Saturday.

Jimmy Marshall will not be taking too much notice of the league table as his Lancaster City players look for a return to winning ways on Saturday.

The Dolly Blues visit Emley in the NPL Premier, seven days after losing against Leek Town at Giant Axe.

City had gone into the match with four points from their previous two matches, but were beaten by a Leek team who had only won two of their first 12.

Two more early strugglers await in the next week-and-a-half with fifth-bottom Emley their hosts on Saturday before a trip to bottom club FC United of Manchester on October 31.

Speaking after the loss to Leek, Marshall told club media: “Emley started the season OK, they’ve had a little blip.

“We try and win every game we go into and we know we can beat anybody in this division on your day - but you can also get beaten by anybody in this division if you don’t perform.

“I don’t look at the league table and think ‘they’re below us, we’ll turn them over’; it just doesn’t work like that.

“It’s a mad league. There’s a lot of teams who are really, really close.

“It’s very difficult to predict results in this division. It’s very competitive and Emley and FC United are both going to be really tough games.

“They’ve got good squads but we’ll always give each team we play our due respect and we’ll go and do our homework on them - and try and make sure we know enough about them to be able to go and take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses.

“I think the bottom line for us is we need to have a good week. It’s our first week for a while where we’ve had a free midweek, so we can get a training session in, get plenty of rest and recovery into them and get ready to go away from home.

“We have to start again now and try to get two or three wins on the bounce because we want to try and get in the play-offs if we can.”

Last Saturday’s defeat leaves the Dolly Blues four points adrift of the top six and Marshall looking for greater consistency.

He added: “We had that little spell after the Rylands game where we got a good win, but we had a lot of these performances where we’ve lost by the odd goal, didn’t do enough, gave a poor goal away, gave ourselves a mountain to climb.

“We came out the other side with a good couple of wins and then slipped back into it, so it’s frustrating.

“We just need to be that little bit more consistent. It’s a tough league and nobody’s going to give you anything.”