St Ledger's Guiseley will battle to the very end

The National League outfit have won only six games in the league and sit bottom of the table with 29 points.

Sean St Ledger’s team will face Maidstone United tomorrow (3pm), in search of their first consecutive wins of the season after they battled to victory against Hartlepool on Easter Monday.

Dayle Southwell scored a 94th-minute winner against the mid-table team to snatch victory in a match heavily affected by the weather.

Now 12 points adrift from safety, St Ledger would not be criticised for looking towards the end of the season.

However, the former Republic of Ireland international insists his team still have a chance of survival.

He said: “We wouldn’t be playing if we didn’t believe we could stay up, so we will approach each game to go and win it.

“We got a good result against Hartlepool. It’s good to get back to winning ways. We have not had a win for a while so it was nice.

“The most important thing is that we win the football game, whatever way it comes.

“Of course, performance is important and nine out of 10 times when you play well, you win.

“When 11 players play well together, 14 including the substitutes, then you win games.”

The Lions have an important run of fixtures coming up after this weekend, facing 11th-placed Dagenham & Redbridge on Tuesday before two ‘six pointers’ against relegation candidates Solihull Moors and Barrow. Guiseley have lost only one match this season when scoring more than one goal and St Ledger will be hoping that his team will be able to break down a Maidstone defence that has kept a modest 10 clean sheets this term.

He continued: “Maidstone will be a difficult game for us. All the games are difficult.

“We know what we have to do and we have to focus on what’s in front of us, worry about what’s going on with ourselves and focus on the 90 minutes that we play.

“If we work hard and give our all we can win.

“The table doesn’t lie. We have not won enough games, but we have improved over the last couple of games.”

St Ledger would not be drawn to comment on his own future, however, and wanted to focus on his team’s performances.

“My focus is on the next game and the win, and then on to the Dagenham and Redbridge game,” he said.

“We need to build from the back. There is no coincidence that the games that we have won, we have kept a clean sheet. So we need to focus on that. We need to defend as an XI and attack as an XI.”

Maidstone have hit a run of bad form themselves recently, losing their last three matches. They are not quite out of hot water yet as they sit in 18th place, just five points outside of the relegation zone. The Stones will see Guiseley as a good opportunity to take three points and push themselves farther away from the drop.

Elsewhere in the National League, FC Halifax will host third-place Boreham Wood. The Shaymen will be keen not to get mixed up in the bottom-of-the-table battle and a win could see them climb to 13th.