MELKSHAM Town manager Kieran Baggs has called for a little perspective when viewing his side’s recent run of poor results, writes JONATHAN LEIGHFIELD.

Town had lost four Southern League Division One South games in a row – without scoring – before another 4-0 drubbing at home to Paulton Rovers on Saturday.

However, Melksham ended that run of five scoreless defeats on Tuesday night as they recorded a comfortable 3-0 win away at Thatcham Town.

Luke Ballinger, Olly Webb and Brad Norris netted for a Melksham side that was without Chris Allen, Neikell Plumber and Jonathan Davies.

Baggs said no one at the club was close to pressing the panic button during their downturn in form and has reminded any pessimists that the club is well above their pre-season target of surviving relegation.

He said: “We know promotion isn’t realistic for us this season, but the objective at the start of the season was to stay in the league, so we’re well above that now.

“We need to take a bit of perspective, take a step back and have a look at where we are in the league.

“If you look at the league table, we’re in sixth place and the objective at the start of the season was to stay in the division, so I think people were getting a little bit carried away with our position at Christmas.”

Over the course of the last 10 games, Melksham had only been involved in one game that both teams had scored in. Only the late comeback at home to Fleet Town bucked that trend.

Their Jekyll-and-Hyde-like form is of no great concern to manager Baggs and the young Town chief is optimistic they will return to consistently picking up wins once his star players return to the fold.

Ahead of this weekend’s trip to Bristol Manor Farm, Baggs said: “We’ve gone on a bad run over the last five games, but every team at every level is going to go through a run like that, especially newly-promoted sides.

“There has been a lot of negative talk about our recent form and how the players have been performing, but I think the players need to be cut a little bit of slack due to what they’ve achieved over the last year.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been missing a lot of players of late – we’ve had injuries, unavailability and suspensions all kick in at the same time and where we’ve probably got one of the bottom five budgets in the league, I can’t go out and sign players when we have those sorts of problems.

“But we got some important players back on Tuesday night. Mark Cooper was back from suspension, Mike Perrett came back in after being unavailable for the last couple of weeks and we had Dave Thompson back after being out for two months.

“Dave has been unbelievable since I arrived here, so having him back in the dressing room was massive because he could probably walk into any Southern League side, even one in the league above.

“They’re three players that you add to a pretty bare squad and it just lifts the whole mood.

“The performance levels were not where I wanted them to be over the last five games, but we got some players back on Tuesday and we’ll have more coming back on Saturday, so things are looking up.”