The real work starts now, says Shirebrook boss Gee

But Gee remains focussed as to the job in hand and he emphasises that the real work starts now.

He said: “Although three wins and two draws since I took over is a terrific effort by the players, we should have had five wins, so it’s actually four points dropped.”

“But we knew as a group that to give us any sort of chance of clawing ourselves back into the title race, we had to have a good November following the poor results in October, so from that perspective it’s taken a huge effort from the group and we have achieved that.”

“But with very little time to work on the training ground due to games coming thick and fast, it is really important to have a couple of training sessions.”

“So it’s nice to get them together this week and work on different things on the pitch, rather than having to try and win games within games each week.”

“The squad is constantly evolving and bonding as a group with both old and new faces working together, so there’s always going to need for a bedding-in period, but the profile of the club is also getting better in terms of people giving the football side a bit more respect, which of course is dictated by consistent positive results.”

“But with so many teams in front of us we just have to do what we can and not worry about what those around us are doing. As long as we win we will close the gap on the teams above us and that’s all we can do at the minute.”

“Our objective week-in-week-out is to catch the next team above us and move up a place. We’ve moved up two places since I arrived three weeks ago and if we can keep doing that then we know where that will take us.”

“After last Saturday’s game, unused substitute Danny Wiltshire decided to join AFC Mansfield, so I will need to bring in another attack-minded player before next Saturday, but they will have to be the right player coming in for the right reasons.”

“To be fair, there is a lot interest at the minute from players wanting to come to the club for different reasons, especially when some of the bigger clubs unfortunately decide to break with early season promises due to their current league positions and radically reduce players wages, which is wrong but it happens all the time at this time of year.”

“But it does give us a chance to bring a few such players in as we have a more stable financial position, albeit at lower levels.”

“So we prepare ourselves now for three tough games in seven days, starting at Dronfield on Saturday, which will be a difficult game as they are now settling down after promotion last year.”

“But we are going into the busy festive period with a bit of momentum and as long as we continue to improve and turn solid performances from draws into wins, then it will give us a good platform by the end of December to have a real go in the second half of the season,” Gee ended.