Pearce: Rocks favourites for relegation

The Rocks go to Weston-super-Mare on Saturday 13 points from safety with only nine games to play.

A second home defeat in four days saw Welling win 3-1 at Nyewood Lane.

Boss Pearce maintained some of Bognor’s football against Welling – and in the 2-0 defeat to East Thurrock that preceded it – was good.

But he acknowledged the problems they’ve had at both ends of the pitch since the first month of the season had never gone away.

Welling scythed through Bognor for two simple first-half goals then seized on a spill by keeper Dan Lincoln to go 3-0 up before a late Ibra Sekajja consolation.

Pearce said: ‘If you look at their three goals, not one is a well-created goal. Each one is self-inflicted and down to poor principles of defending.

‘You could have Jose Mourinho or Pep Guardiola here, you cannot allow for mistakes of that nature. The individual mistakes are beyond belief.

‘And I thought for a team 3-0 down who are bottom of the league playing a team who are going for the promotion places, in the last 20 minutes we played some quite good football. But the six times we got into really great crossing positions, we didn’t really hurt them.’

Pearce admitted it looked like relegation would be confirmed and said in a lower league, more players would be available to the club.

He added: ‘If we do go down the challenge will be to come straight back up. And if you come straight back up, you’ve got to make sure you overcome the same problems you are coming up with.

‘It’s a merry-go-round – it’s not easy, it’s a massive challenge. We should enjoy the challenge of playing at a better level of football.

‘If you were a betting man, we are favourites to go down and the bookies aren’t often wrong. Mathematically we can but our home record is abysmal.’

Full-back Calvin Davies is available on Saturday after suspension.

by Steve Bone