It's now substance over style for Matlock Town boss Paul Phillips in promotion push

With just one win in their last seven league matches, the Gladiators lie in third spot, six points behind leaders Buxton with a game in hand.

Second-placed South Shields are two points in front of Matlock with Phillips’ troops having played one game fewer.

While Matlock went down to a disappointing 1-0 home defeat to Atherton Colleries last Saturday, Buxton were beating Radcliffe 3-0 while Shields earned a point at Basford United in a 1-1 draw and were then beaten by the only goal of the game at Lancaster City on Tuesday.

Now Matlock will be looking to right the wrongs of last weekend with a derby win at Mickleover on Saturday on a ground where they are yet to win a league match.

“I’d take eight bad performances if it brought us eight wins,” said Phillips.

“Performances now go out of the window, in the next eight games we’ve got to find a way to win these games.”

They will have to do so without club captain Liam Hughes for the next two matches. Hughes picked up his tenth yellow card of the season against Atherton so he will also miss next weekend’s trip to Scarborough Athletic .

Already angered by the defeat, Hughes’ caution did nothing to improve his manager’s mood.

Phillips said: “I was annoyed with him, I’d had a word with him beforehand saying to keep out of trouble but he goes and gets himself booked. I’ve told him he’s got to look at himself, I’m dealing with it in-house.”

Had Hughes not received a yellow card on Saturday, then his previous four yellow cards would also have been wiped out. Instead it gives a chance to someone else and maybe forces a change in style.

“Perhaps we’ll not resort so much to taking the easy way out and putting the ball up there in the air,” said Phillips.

“We’ve played without Liam before this season, particularly early on when we won well at Nantwich and Warrington so we’ll have to look at finding another way to win games.

"Also now our last four away games are on astroturf so we’ll need a different kind of plan.”

Phillips laid into his Matlock Town side after Saturday’s last-gasp home defeat to Atherton Collieries.

A 89th minute winner from Aaron Smith proved the difference after Matlock had struggled throughout.

And Phillips was fuming with the performance.

“Not good enough,” were the words he used directly after the game and he repeated them in midweek.

He said: “We were unbalanced at the end due to the changes we made. We’d had enough chances to win it but they went and nicked a goal. We wanted to win the match but to do that it’s imperative we put the ball in the net.

"Really I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. We threw players on and it worked at Whitby and Gainsborough but not on Saturday.

"First and foremost we went for the win for three draws only equals one win. We’re not scoring enough goals, we have players to do it but they’re not doing their jobs. I’ll stick up for them to the hilt when it’s deserved but sometimes you have to come out with the harsh comments.”

Phillips hinted that he may be adding to his squad before the weekend trip to Mickleover, particularly as Liam King and Alex Wiles are both out with injuries to add to Hughes being suspended.

The NPL transfer deadline is on Thursday 24 March. Riece Bertram has also been released to return to Belper Town.

Victory for both clubs this coming Saturday is important, with Matlock wanting to stay in contention for the title and the hosts wanting points to move away from the bottom of the table. After five successive wins, Mickleover have taken just one point from the last nine on offer.

“We’ve not been good enough,” Phillips reiterated. “But we’re still up there, had we done our jobs properly we could have been eight points clear by now.

“We don’t want to be playing second fiddle, we’ve got to go into games knowing we can beat our opponents.

"We started the season well and have been decent for 80 per cent of it. We can’t go to sleep now, we must all make sure we do our jobs.

"To the fans, I say stick with us, they’ve not had a lot to shout about in the last few weeks but we need them more than ever now.”