Jon Macken’s message to his Witton Albion players is a simple one – keep going.

The Albion manager has overseen an upturn in form of late, with their past five matches yielding three victories and just one defeat.

That run included back-to-back triumphs over the festive period, with high-flying Runcorn Linnets beaten at the U Lock It Stadium after their derby win over neighbours 1874 Northwich on Boxing Day.

It means Witton head into this week’s games – a trip to Avro on Saturday before a midweek hosting of City of Liverpool on Tuesday – full of confidence amid the unpredictable nature of a competitive division.

However, Macken wants his side to be the ones putting a consistent run together – even if it means winning ugly at times.

“Football is all about results at the end of the day,” he said.

“We all want the perfect performance to go with it but sometimes, you have to grind them out.

“The last few weeks has been really good and there’s been a real coming together. We’ve got some hard-working players.

“It’s a challenge when you’re going through a bad patch and when we didn’t get a result against Vauxhall, we were bitterly disappointed as we should have got something out of the game.

“We didn’t and we had to bounce back but in the last two games, the lads have really shown their character.

“It’s a very strange season in every division – you can’t predict results at the moment.

“We’ve got to be the one that stands out, a team that people can predict because they fancy us as we’re playing well with momentum and confidence.

“We’ve got to carry on pushing ourselves and looking at every game as a winnable opportunity, but we’re going to have to work extremely hard to do that no matter who we’re up against.”

Witton go into the weekend sitting 12th in the Northern Premier League West Division table, six points shy of the play-off spots and nine clear of the relegation zone.