Chichester City coach Potter: We want to keep playing

Chichester City coach Danny Potter wants to keep playing as the threat of a disrupted season looms large. Picture by Neil Holmes

A surge in positive Covid-19 cases driven by the highly-transmittable Omicron variant has wreaked havoc across English football.

Six Premier League fixtures were postponed last weekend due to Covid, while a further 19 games across the EFL were called off.

The Premier League and the EFL have both agreed to perservere with their festive programme, and Potter hoped the Isthmian League would follow suit

He said: “Who knows what’s going to be faced in the New Year? But we are very cautious.

“We ask our players to do lateral flows so we are preventing anything from spreading around the club.

"We want to keep going. We’ve got momentum, we’re enjoying our football again and it’ll impact on every club, not just us, if the league was postponed or paused.

“Our intentions are, if we can, to complete the season if we can. We fully respect the top teams in our league and some of those, including Hastings [who lead Isthmian South East during the curtailed 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns], deserve more.

“I personally feel something better should have been done in the last two years to get Hastings promoted.”

Saturday saw Chichester City thump Faversham Town 5-1 at home to move five points shy of the Isthmian South East play-offs - full report on page 70.

Potter was delighted with Saturday’s performance and was looking forward to taking Chi’s play-off push into the new year.

He added: “We controlled the game, we looked very comfortable on the ball and we looked to exploit the Faversham back line.

“We were a bit more clinical in that game than we have been in the last few weeks. We’re starting to build up our momentum.

“We’ve been working quite hard behind the scenes with our players and we’ve got a very close squad, which helps.

“We are looking forward to 2022 but we know the league is going to get tighter and there are going to be some very good teams that we are going to be facing quite soon again. It’s all to be played for.”

Chichester City visit Lancing on Monday, December 27 and Potter was looking forward to the West Sussex derby

He said: "We’ll be in a good shape to go there. It’s a local derby for us as it’s not too far to travel.

"When we played them earlier in the season I think the scoreline flattered us. I thought they were better than the 4-0 result showed.

"We do know one or two of their players are very good and we are aware of what their threat will be.

"We’re looking forward to it and it will be a test. There are no easy games in our league."