'Fantastic' Knaresborough Town aiming to build on back-to-back victories and realise top-10 ambition

Knaresborough Town manager Simon Parkes has been thrilled by his side's two most recent performances. Picture: Gerard Binks

The Manse Lane outfit have delivered what their manager describes as possibly their "two best performances" of 2022/23 in the last week, thrashing Handsworth 5-0 at the weekend before turning Thackley over in their own back yard on Tuesday night.

Those back-to-back victories following a run of six matches without one have lifted Boro back up to 10th position, and with just three fixtures remaining this term, Parkes is looking to sign off on a high.

"The last two results have been fantastic. They've been arguably our two best performances of the season and we've been very worthy of the convincing nature of the score-lines," he told the Harrogate Advertiser.

"Against Handsworth it could easily have been seven or eight if we had been more clinical in the first half.

"Then to go to Thackley, a team who've benefited from a fair bit of investment recently and made some very good signings and control the game for long periods and win 3-0, I think it says a lot.

"Obviously there's not many games left now, but the aim is just to keep this up, to end the season as strongly as possible and hopefully we achieve our goal of that top-10 finish.

"We've got a couple of really tough fixtures coming up, but if we keep playing the way we have in the last two then there's no reason why we can't keep winning. The aim is nine points from nine and if we do that then we’re confident that 10th position is the lowest we’ll end up.”

On the reasons behind Boro’s improved performance levels in their last two matches, Parkes added: “It’s been nice to be able to start the same XI in consecutive games as that’s been a rarity this season.

"We also had two weeks off prior to the Handsworth match and that gave us the chance to work on a few things on the training ground. There’s things that we’ve worked on that we’ve been able to put into practice on game-day, so credit to the lads for that.

"And the whole squad has been playing its part, not just the starting XI, the lads coming on have done their bit too.”

Boro travel to Golcar United this Saturday (3pm).