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Grantham Town are hoping to win the battle against relegation from the Northern Premier League




Three away games in six days will decide Grantham Town's fate in their battle against relegation from the Northern Premier League.

The Gingerbreads face midweek trips to Liversedge tonight (Monday) and Sheffield on Wednesday before completing their East Division campaign next weekend at Winterton Rangers.

Louis Bland's side briefly moved out of the bottom two relegation places the previous weekend after a 1-0 win at Ashington.

Grantham face Winterton on the final day of the season. Photo: Toby Roberts
Grantham face Winterton on the final day of the season. Photo: Toby Roberts

But Brighouse's midweek triumph last Tuesday night over Consett plunged Grantham back into the danger zone again.

They faced an anxious watching brief over the weekend as they were without a game and two of their four relegation rivals both picked up wins.

Ossett were 2-1 victors at Bridlington and both of those sides are now four points clear of Grantham who do have games in hand.

Although third-from-bottom Brighouse - who are two points clear of the Gingerbreads having played two games more - were defeated, Winterton Rangers sent Grantham to the foot of the table with a surprise 2-1 win at Dunston.

It leaves Grantham one point adrift of the Scunthorpe side but with two games in hand ahead of their meeting on the final day of the season.

The Gingerbreads' fate is still in their own hands and head coach Bland is hoping the free weekend could work in his side's favour.

He said: "We are still remaining very positive and that won't change.

"We gave ourselves a massive opportunity with the win last weekend and, although it will be a very difficult week which has been made more nervy by not playing so you can't do anything about it, at least we will know what points target we need to hit.

"It might be three, six or nine but we will know what we need to do and we have put ourselves in that position to give us extra motivation."

Grantham's form on the road hasn't been too strong this term with just two wins from the 16 games on their travels.

The recent success at Ashington was their first away win since the 2-1 victory at Grimsby Borough in mid-September.

They have, however, lost just one of their last five league games and head to Liversedge after keeping back-to-back clean sheets.

Bland added: "We are just starting to make tiny improvements in certain areas and that's why we're picking up more clean sheets and three points.

"It was a big win at Ashington because we haven't picked up many points away from home this season but there haven't been many times recently where we've been nowhere near it.

"We have been in every game and, now that we're defending a bit better as a unit, we've always got a chance of scoring which is a positive.

"We've got three games left and it doesn't matter if they're at home or away. The pressure is still the same."

Relegation rivals Ossett are at Hebburn tomorrow night (Tuesday) while the final day of the season sees them host Cleethorpes, Brighouse entertain Carlton while Bridlington visit Consett.



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