South Shields challenged ahead of tough test against in-form Chester

Elliott Dickman wants South Shields to cut out of the mistakes as they look to claim what would be a notable win against current National League North leaders Chester.

The visitors will arrive at the 1st Cloud Arena on Saturday sat four points clear at the top of the table and will be looking to rack up a seventh consecutive away win after edging to a 1-0 victory at Peterborough Sports last weekend. By contrast, the Mariners are without a win in their last five games and have taken just one point from home games against Scarborough Athletic and Hereford earlier this week.

There was understandable frustration from the latter of those fixtures as Dickman’s side were condemned to defeat by a Yusifu Ceesay goal after wasting a number of opportunities to take at least a point from the game. With Saturday’s tough test against the division’s current frontrunners now at the forefront of his mind, Dickman knows exactly what he wants from his players.

“We are playing well, we are frustrated we aren’t winning games and we want to do as well as we can in the division,” the Mariners boss told The Gazette.

“We need to translate and transform the performances into results because we want to be up there challenging for the play-offs in a very tough division. We have a difficult game on Saturday because Chester are top of the division for the reason and they are never an easy team to play against. But I think anyone coming to our place will find it difficult because of how we play and the main thing we have to do is negate the goals we give away, which is something we have spoken about internally.

“It seems like the silly mistakes we are making are getting punished and that is costing us so we have to prevent that happening. We can work on a lot of things but certain aspects of individual decisions can be better and we have to be better at dealing with the here and now. We will be ready for it and we are completely focused on trying to perform well and get a win.”

Loan signing Dylan Stephenson made a substitute appearance in the midweek defeat just hours after completing a return to South Shields from National League side Dagenham and Redbridge. The former Newcastle United forward enjoyed a productive spell with the Mariners during the second half of last season and could come into contention for a starting place against Chester after Dickman revealed he is monitoring some ‘little knocks and bumps’ suffered by his players over the last week.

“Dylan has a chance to play and he didn’t start on Tuesday because he’s only had a little time with us. He knows how we play but we felt the attacking players did well on Saturday so they deserved another shot. We will look to how everyone is after Tuesday because there are little knocks and bumps.”

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