The Green Lions begin a run of three successive home games this afternoon when they host AFC Varndeanians and four of their five matches in January will be at Victoria Park, with Eastbourne United, Lingfield and Steyning Town also due to visit the island this month. Vance has set his stall out by revealing want he wants to accomplish in the next four weeks.
‘Being at home is a huge advantage to us and I don’t think I have been able to say this for at least seven years, but if we do not get maximum points at home in January, I feel we will have underachieved,’ he said.
AFC Varndeanians are third from bottom of the Southern Combination Premier Divisoin table.
However, their recent form has been good as they were unbeaten in their four outings during December.
‘I do not look at the table anyway, because of that reason,’ Vance said.
‘When we played AFC Varndeanians away, they were really good. They gave us a really good game, a really good test, and we had to work hard to get a [1-0] win.
‘I will not be taking anything for granted and I will be telling the players not to as well.’
Vance emphasised that point because he is still reeling from 6-2 defeat away to Forest Row last weekend, which brought to an end GFC’s five-match winning streak.
‘I was very disappointed with the situation last weekend and we have discussed this internally,’ he said.
‘The reason I was most disappointed was that it was an incredibly winnable game, but what it shows is that in football if you have got 11 people who want to win more than the other 11 and have got the capability of running more, then any 11 can beat any other 11.
‘For me it was another game that we should not be losing and the disappointment is we had the chance to go third and ended up dropping a place, so all the hard work of the previous five games was potentially undone by one performance.
‘What we do not want is for these [poor] games to come back and bite us come the end of the season.’
Vance reported that GFC will likely be missing Thomas Dodds and Brandon Wallace today as they are the latest players to have been hit by a flu bug that affected several players over the Christmas period.
Defender Ben Solway is away.
Today’s match kicks off at 2pm at Victoria Park.
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