Dartford boss Tony Burman leads his side into this weekend’s game with Gateshead, knowing that his side must improve their form against sides at the wrong end of Blue Square Premier if the Darts themselves aren’t to get dragged into their own fight for survival.

After Tuesday’s home defeat to relegation threatened Barrow, the Darts boss admitted, “We’ve got to be very careful – we need a win! We do need a win if not two – I don’t want to be dragged into things that are going on below us. The guys have been excellent – we all know that – but we have to be careful and need a win to stop getting dragged into things.”

In a table that was published in Tuesday night’s programme, the Darts “top” a table of games played just against sides in the top half of the table.  Problem is that in a similar table against sides in the bottom half, Burman’s side are 23rd out of 24 – a position that has left the Darts boss – and others – baffled as he admitted,

“I wish I had a magic wand and could put my finger on what’s gone wrong. We haven’t always played well against the teams below us although there have been some things go against us. Its really frustrating and as a manager you really can’t put your finger on it.”

“We don’t prepare for the games any differently – we’re as thorough for the league leaders as we are for the side at the bottom of the table, but it’s just the way that things have panned out.”

“Just look at Tuesday – the effort was there against Barrow the same way it was when we beat Wrexham here, but it just didn’t come off for us.”

“Is fifty points going to be enough? I really don’t know! A couple of the teams above us have won a couple recently and we’re stuck on 49 points after losing the last two.”

“We’ve got to be careful we’re not over the 50 mark yet! Lets face it before last Saturday we were all saying how nice it would be to finish in the top ten, but now we’re cautiously looking over our shoulders.”

The weather has clearly ruined many clubs seasons with some – including Gateshead – now facing trying to play three games a week for the remainder of the season.

When asked if he felt sorry for their opponents. Burman thoughtfully said, “We can’t dictate what the weather does, but we all know that we’re having a bad winter at the moment and that’s something that we can’t control.”

“But the thing is in the first two weeks of the season, we all get six or seven games in and then there’s nothing midweek for a while, and I really do think that we’re going to have another look at playing more in the early stages.”

“But let’s been honest, the weather has been ridiculously poor this year especially this month – we’re meant to be in Spring but there’s even more snow forecast for the weekend!”

Yes the weather has spoiled things, but we must get the games played – we’ve got one week of Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday coming up and we’ve done reasonably well with our games – its going to be a critical time.”

“We deserved to get something out of the Barrow game on Tuesday, as the lads put the effort back in that we expect, but was missing so badly at Hyde last Saturday.”

“No arguements about their penalty, but if we’d have had a bit more quality in the final third, things could have changed.  But I do have to say that there’s two or three decisions that went against us on Tuesday night that weren’t right and changed the game.  They were big decisions and definitely changed the game, but that said, we didn’t win because again we didn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”

“Gateshead had a good win on Tuesday and are playing a lot of football at the moment, but if we show the same commitment and the same workrate as we did on Tuesday and add a little bit of quality to the play it’s a game that we are definitely capable of winning.”

“Gateshead are a decent side – we lost up there – but they’ve had a horrendous time in just getting their games on, but they will be another tough, tough game.  Gateshead are on a good winning run and we know that we’re in  for a tough game.”

Burman will welcome “new” loanee Charlie Sheringham into the squad, whilst he’ll be hoping that Ryan Hayes will have fully recovered from the bug that affected his performance in midweek.