Worcester Raiders joint-manager Jordan Lewis believes his side will have a “tough” game on their hands when they face Hereford Lads Club on Saturday afternoon.
Raiders currently occupy 12th position in the Hellenic Premier Division, with their Herefordshire-based opponents three places and eight points below.
The Sixways Stadium residents saw themselves pick up a 4-0 win over Thornbury Town, with that momentum set to be crucial for Lewis and fellow boss Glen Sitch as they travel to the County Ground.
“There’s a lot more to come from us,” Lewis said.
“If we can be better and at the standards we want our side to be at, we could’ve won by a few more goals last weekend and it was a good pleasing win. We know we’ve got more gears to get through.
“We’ve shown more than enough times that we can score goals, we’ve just given away some soft goals so the focus is on that clean sheet and making sure we’re tight as a defensive unit. When we go forwards we need to take our chances and going through those gears from Thornbury.
“We’d like to start a bit faster, it took too long to get going in that one, we also went down to 10 men for half-an-hour in the second half and we still managed to score the goals. The goals are there it’s just starting a bit faster and having that mindset that we’re going to win every game.
“We went through a spell and there was a real losing mentality and that was where we were at. Now we feel like we’ve got a mentality where we want to win every single game.”
Their visit to Hereford is the beginning of a tricky week for Lewis and Sitch’s men, with them set to follow Saturday’s encounter up with clashes against Wantage Town and Hereford Pegasus – all deemed to be winnable clashes for Raiders.
“They’re all teams that we can get nine points from in a week,” Lewis declared.
“We played Hereford Lads Club earlier in the season at home and beat them 1-0, they’re a very energetic, young side. They had a lot of pace in the team and worked really hard and were very tough to beat, we’ve done our research on them from that game.
“We’ve got Sam Judge in recently who’s come from Hereford Lads Club as well. Sam will know all about them and they’ll know all about Sam. It’ll prove good motivation for him, he’ll be hungry for it and up for this one.
YOU THOUGHT WE WAS FINISHED….
— Worcester Raiders FC (@WorcsRaidersFC) December 30, 2023
Welcome Sam 🤝
Judge joins us from Hereford Lads Clubs, having previously been at Malvern. The talented winger is Raiders fourth signing in two days. #WeAreRaiders || #UTR⚔️ pic.twitter.com/xZWRRFWMgB
“We’re not looking at the table, it doesn’t matter, everyone will be up for it. They’ll always be a tough opposition with teams being physical and aggressive whoever we play.
“We want to build on the clean sheet from last time, we speak to the lads a lot about keeping a clean sheet and defending from the front. If we keep a clean sheet we need one goal to win a game and we can do that.”
