Time for a change as Gosport Borough boss Shaun Gale seeks winning formula again after blistering season start

The Boro boss believes now is the right time to freshen things up in certain areas following a 'dip in form' for some of his squad members.

Gosport made a blistering start to the season, losing just one of their opening nine league fixtures to storm up the table.

Admittedly, Gale's men are still sitting third in the division, but they've lost three of their previous four Southern Premier South fixtures - and four of the previous five in all competitions.

Boro now have a run of three successive home league games on the spin at Privett Park, starting with Beaconsfield on Saturday.

And Gale says he'll be making some changes for the clash as he desperately looks for his team to rediscover their storming early season form.

The Boro boss said: ‘Yeah, I think so (time for some changes). I think sometimes - the lads have done great - I’m not just using the youngsters because some of the senior players have got to do better, sometimes people do have a little bit of dip in form. If they are having a dip in form then sometimes you’ve got to take them out - whether that’s senior or young players.

‘The lads that are there at the moment, there are a few underperforming - I say underperforming - not on work rate but just in general.

‘I think they can do things better, they know that as well, that’s not a criticism of them as a group because they’ve been fantastic.

‘There are certain things we need to learn, which we’ve taken out of Saturday, because we know we can do a lot better.’

With Beaconsfield, Merthyr and Kings Langley all to come in three successive league games at Privett Park, Gale sees this as the perfect chance to get his men firing again.

The Boro boss stressed the importance of his squad 'finding ways to win football matches again’. Gale said: ‘Every game is important, yeah of course (next three are at home), but they’re all important games. If we want to be up there challenging we’ve got to be getting decent points out of the next three games.

‘Obviously teams up above us are doing well, we’re third, we need to stay around it.

‘I’ve said the important thing is we stay around it and the only way we do that is by winning football matches. We need to do that, starting with Saturday, which will be a tough game against Beaconsfield who are a good side, but we’ve got to be back finding ways to get winning football matches again.’

Defender Matt Briggs (back and neck) looks doubtful to return in time for Saturday’s visit of Beaconsfield.

Meanwhile, Harry Kavanagh (broken collarbone) is continuing to make promising progress from his setback after coming on as a substitute in the FA Trophy defeat to Salisbury last weekend.