Roger Herridge says performances in recent weeks have given him the belief that Binfield can return to winning ways in the Hellenic Premier Division sooner rather than later.
They will have their first chance on Tuesday evening (7.45pm) when they head to Stag Meadow to face 14th-placed Windsor in the first of three meetings between the two sides in the two weeks before the end of February.
“We’ve got to play Windsor three times in 15 days and that won’t be easy,” Binfield boss Herridge told The Wokingham Paper.
“Mick (Woodham) has got a good side there, got a good mix of experience and youth. We play them for the first time on Tuesday night and that will be a difficult game based on our current form.
“We need to win games. We need to get a couple of players back and we need to find a couple of players that are going to help us. That’s the hardest part because the players don’t grow on trees.”
It has been a tough time for the Moles, with their only victory in 2019 coming via a penalty shoot-out in the Floodlit Cup at Brimscombe and Thrupp last Tuesday.
Aside from that, the record reads played eight, drawn three, lost five, conceding 22 goals in the process including Saturday’s 2-0 league loss against leaders Brimscombe at Hill Farm Lane, which leaves Binfield 11th in the table.
But Herridge was encouraged by his side’s performance.
“We’re always disappointed to lose and the fact is since the turn of the year we haven’t won enough,” he said.
“Whether they’re top or mid-table or bottom of the table, it’s certainly a game that, at home, we wanted to win.
“At the minute it’s fine margins really. We’re in a little bit of a rut where we’re not getting the little bit of luck or the rub of the green that we sometimes need.
“We’ve just got to keep believing that our luck or our fortunes will turn very, very quickly. But we didn’t play poorly.”
He added: “Over the last three or four games, there’s certainly been nothing wrong with our performances.
“It’s a football cliche but we need to be better in both penalty boxes. We need to be more clinical in terms of scoring goals and we need to make better decisions in those areas and certainly we need to be better defensively and cut out the errors.
“I think the level of football we’re playing at, generally the side that makes the least mistakes tends to win the game. We’re making too many errors at the minute and that’s why we’re losing or drawing games and not winning them.”
One player who has recently joined Herridge’s squad is teenager Alex Shean.
He made his debut during the cup win at Brimscombe before being an unused sub in the league clash on Saturday. And Herridge says he is set to give the youngster more minutes on Tuesday.
“Alex is only a young lad, he’s still eligible to play for our Allied side,” explained Herridge.
“He’s a lad who lives in the village of Binfield, he’s been training over at Basingstoke and Terry Brown said ‘I’ve got a lad who needs some games’.
“Alex has come in and been involved in a couple of games. He didn’t get on on Saturday. He’ll have some involvement tonight.
“He’s another young lad and he’s got a bright future ahead of him.
“My issue at the moment is we’ve got quite a few young players but I need to start winning some games. You have to go careful how many young lads you have on the pitch at the same time really. But I like him.
“He came on against Brimscombe, he works really hard, gets up and down. We’ll have a better look at him over the next few weeks.”
For more from Herridge, see Thursday’s Wokingham Paper.
