Gloucester City look to take their unbeaten run to four games when they host Concord Rangers on Saturday.

Five points from their last three games have given them renewed hope of avoiding the drop from National League South, and a win against a team just outside the promotion play-off positions would be another big step in the right direction following the appointment of Mike Cook as manager in early January.

But for a missed penalty in the 0-0 home draw against high-flying Bath City at the end of last month – their most recent outing – Gloucester would already be out of the bottom three.

Scoring goals has been their problem of course and having netted just 18 in 28 league games they know that is something that has to improve.

“We’ve been pretty good at the back,” said coach Tom Webb, “we really put in a defensive shift. We’ve kept 10 clean sheets this season which puts us in the top five in the league.

“What we’ve got to do is find a balance between not conceding and trying to create chances. We need to find a way to win games 1-0 or 2-0.”

Since Cook’s appointment Gloucester have also drawn 0-0 at home to fellow strugglers Hungerford Town and won 1-0 at Oxford City.

Oxford are comfortable in mid-table so that was a very welcome three points, but Webb knows that it is what they do at home – they play their home games at Evesham United – that is likely to make or break their season.

“We need to win our home games, those are the ones we’re targeting,” said Webb. “Every team in the league is beatable when we’re at home.

“The pitch at Evesham is bobbly and it always seems to be windy, teams don’t like playing there.

“We’ve drawn too many games that we needed to win but Saturday is a winnable game.”

Concord will arrive still looking for their first league win of 2019, having drawn five and lost one of their six games since the turn of the year. Before that they’d won four and drawn two of their six league games.