CHIPPENHAM Town manager Mark Collier reckons that his Bluebirds side will evolve into an increasingly formidable entity as the Southern League Premier Division season wears on.

Chippenham kicked off the new campaign with a fine 2-0 win at Biggleswade Town last Saturday but on Monday night, the Hardenhuish Park men were unable to pull off another successful away foray as they were beaten 2-1 at Redditch United.

Collier thinks that the Bluebirds can be satisfied with their first week of the new season and with new faces and a new system to implement, the Chippenham boss sees plenty of scope for improvement in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re a learning side and we can get better as the season progresses – we’re comfortable with that,” said Collier.

“We had six new faces in the team on Saturday, which is a large number to bring in, and we’ve also been playing a slightly different system, which the players are going to get used to the more they play in it.

“We’ve been trying to change certain little habits that a few people have got too but hopefully we can go on to be involved at the more competitive end of the table.

“As someone said to me, if we’d drawn both of our games, we might have thought ‘oh great, we’re unbeaten’ but we still would have only had two points – it’s not a bad start to the season at all.”

Collier is contending with a host of early-season injuries, with Matt Coupe, who missed Monday’s game at Redditch, hopeful of being fit for Saturday’s clash with Arlesey Town at Hardenhuish Park.

But Bryan Smith, Alan Griffin and Conor McCormack are all out, with James Guthrie suspended.

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