Telford aim to build from rare clean sheet platform

A 2-0 win at Buxton on January 14 was also, however, the last time rock-bottom Telford tasted victory in an unrelenting battle with the drop.

Saturday’s 0-0 draw at 22nd-placed Farsley Celtic sees Wilkin’s side 16 points from safety – as well as having an inferior goal difference – and tonight the Bucks host second-bottom Bradford Park Avenue, as once again they face their nearest National League North rivals.

With just 30 points left to play for, beginning tonight, Wilkin said: “It’s always good to keep clean sheets, which gives you that platform to improve.

“Doing it on a regular basis and an improvement up the other end, to a degree, it makes sense we would win more games.

“Credit to the boys on Saturday, we applied ourselves but couldn’t quite get the result we wanted.

“Tonight’s another massive game and it’d be nice if we can start to build up more resilience and toughness to these situations, to get more people to line up on a more regular basis, I’ve said that for a while.

“When you can get a consistent side out hopefully then you can build consistency into what you’re trying to do as a group and the whole thing knits together.”

With 58 in 36 games, Telford have conceded the joint-most goals this term with Gloucester City who, remarkably, are up in eighth.

Goalscoring has also been a mighty hindrance and the Bucks have managed just 23 at a rate of 0.64 per game. The next lowest scorers, Kettering, have mustered 31.