Struggling Market Drayton can see off high flying Darlaston says boss Adam Shillcock

Drayton’s desperate scrap to avoid back-to-back relegations looks tougher by the week following a 25th Midland League Premier defeat in a row from 26 attempts.

Shillcock’s men lost 3-1 at home to top-half Romulus last weekend and the challenges keep coming, with third-placed Darlo on the horizon at Greenfields on Saturday.

“It’s that old cliché that you don’t have the luck at the bottom of the league, it’s playing out like that,” said boss Shillcock. “Although Saturday was probably the worst we’ve played as a unit. We were competitive and 1-1 at half-time but conceded early with a really poor goal.

“But we broke and Callum slotted away coolly on is debut, so that was positive.

“Then in the second half we managed to hit the post and the bar and blazed over at 1-1.

“Since I’ve come in, being brutally honest, I can only think of two goals where we’ve been outplayed, there have been a lot of individual errors. “We had a man down and off with a head injury and conceded from the corner when he was off.It is something we have to assess, we are conceding from set-pieces in every game.”

New recruit, centre-forward Callum Parker, 22, the ex-Nantwich Town frontman signed from Newcastle Town to replace Harvey Lewis, netted Drayton’s equaliser against Romulus from a sharp break.

Shillcock said of facing Darlaston: “We were 1-0 up (in January) and their manager Dean Gill said we were comfortably one of the better footballing teams they’ve faced.

“We’ve had six games and three we should’ve won and one drawn. That would’ve given us something to work with. It’s a big uphill task now but I still have belief – I have belief we can beat Darlo.”