Telford v Bromsgrove Sporting - Match preview

The Bucks have recorded four wins in a row in the Southern Central Premier, bouncing back from the 5-1 humiliation at the hands of Stourbridge in positive fashion. Yet despite their perfect 12 points from 12, the Bucks boss believes his side are still playing within themselves.

“Absolutely,” Wilkin said when asked if Telford were playing within themselves. “I think we’re a bit further ahead than we were at this stage last season, but there are still players that have to come into form and some players that you’d still expect more from at the moment.

“When you lose bits here and bits there from what you are as a whole it can have an effect, and it’s definitely affected us in the early parts of this season.”

Wilkin added: “It is a positive, but with all due respect I’m always asked at the start of the season whether or not the fixtures have fallen kindly for us, and if I’m honest it does appear to have been relatively kind to us at this stage.

“I’m surmising that might be the case, but at the end of the day you can only beat what’s in front of you and we’ve found a way to win.

“I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and say it’s not been as convincing as it might have been in those games, there are still bits to iron out.

“I’ve got a strong idea of what (Telford’s issues are), and it’s not just one thing.

“There’s areas of the squad that we can improve, areas of games that we need to improve and clearly we’re working hard to do so.”

Saturday’s 2-1 win at Lowestoft Town saw the return of Jordan Piggott, Rhys Hilton and Steffan Jones to the Bucks squad, but striker Matty Stenson remained absent.

“Matty showed glimpses of what he’s capable of last season and we’ve not seen enough of that this year unfortunately,” Wilkin admitted. “Hopefully when we do get him back there will be more of what we know he can offer us, and he can be one of the key players to help us reach the levels we want to reach.”

And against a Bromsgrove side that have started the season in inconsistent fashion, Telford’s boss is hoping to have his full quota of players available.

“We’ve had them watched and the report we got back is that they’re a very high-energy side with good players in their ranks,” Wilkin explained. “They’ve added quite a lot of new players to their group and they are waiting for that to gel a little bit just like we are.”

He added: “You can see by the table that there are a lot of teams up there sharing a similar amount of points, and it’s just about which ones stick their neck out and really sustain the run that they’re on.”