Guiseley boss Mark Bower confident Lions can maintain promising Northern Premier League form

​The Lions are sitting pretty in third place in the Northern Premier League at the moment, on the same amount of points as Worksop Town in second with a game in hand – both teams are 15 points adrift of runaway leaders Macclesfield.

Bower believes Whitby – currently sat 11th in the standings – are one of the league’s form sides at the moment.

“Whitby are another team where they’ve changed the manager early season and they seem to have picked up a few wins in the league coming into this one,” said Bower.

“They’re in good form and they’ll be full of confidence, and have a belief about them.

"We know if we’re at it though, we have a great chance of winning any game against any side in our division.

“We just have to keep doing the basics well, and the weather is forecast to be wild, wet, windy.

"It’ll be a bit different to what we’ve been used to, so we’ll have to try and adapt to the conditions and that we’re as prepared as we can be.”

Guiseley come into the game off the back of a 2-2 draw with fourth-bottom Warrington Rylands.

It represented a point saved by the Lions, having been 2-0 down at half-time. And while Bower knows that Rylands are better than their 19th place, he was still left disappointed not to have won the game.

“Warrington had a poor start to the season but a new manager has come in the last six weeks or so and they have really picked up - they beat Scunthorpe in the FA Trophy,” added Bower.

“They’ve had some really good results in the league lately and had not lost many games – so in the form table they’d probably be one of the top six or so teams in the division.

“We knew it would be a tough test – the toughest one we’ve had in recent games to be honest.

"We were a little bit disappointed not to get the win, but we can’t win them all and if you can’t win, to come back and get a draw – especially when we had been 2-0 down – then we’ll take that.

“We’ve a couple of home games coming up now, so if we can pick up good results in them, then the Warrington draw isn’t a bad point.”

Bower says he’s happy with his side’s form and how they’ve improved as the season has gone on and says that they can only get stronger with players coming back from long-term injuries.

“Over a large period of time now the form has been good,” he said.

“We’ve only lost once in the league since the second weekend.

"We have players coming back to fitness too, so we’ve had a stronger squad to pick from for the last couple of games.

“We’re pleased that we’re heading in the right direction. We had a little bit of a sticky start with four points from the first four games.

“Since then, we’ve enjoyed a really good points return and the lads are all getting to know each other a bit more.

"It was a new team we put together and those relationships and understandings on the pitch are building and growing and improving.

"We feel that we’ve improved as the season has gone on.”