St Albans City looking to discover their inner Manchester United ahead of Hemel derby

Ian Allinson wants his St Albans City side to emulate Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team – starting with this Saturday’s trip to local rivals Hemel Hempstead Town.

The City boss believes that if they are to achieve their goal of making the Vanarama National League South play-offs then they have got to rediscover their consistency, and that means playing well in every game.

He said: “What was so good about Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson was that every game for them was a cup final and in every game they played they had to raise their levels above the teams that wanted to beat them.

“It’s no good us raising our levels against the likes of Maidenhead and then not turning up against the Oxford City’s [of this world]. That’s not being disrespectful to Oxford but our work ethic and the way we went about our business wasn’t good enough that day.

“I know we are better than that and hopefully the changes we have made are what we require. We’ve brought three quality players into the set-up.

“We’ve now got to push on and try as finish as high as we can and hopefully that means we can get into the play-offs.

“But we’ve got to be consistent and we’ve got to stop conceding silly goals and we’ve got to make sure we’re scoring goals at the other end.”

City’s draw with Maidenhead stopped a run of three straight league defeats but the Saints are currently suffering their worst sequence this year.

Their neighbours though have started to recover following a tough beginning to the season and are undefeated in their last five outings, winning four of them.

The two teams have drawn 2-2 in the last three meetings, with Hemel scoring late goals in each of them.

Kick-off at Vauxhall Road is at 3pm.