LYDNEY Town nurse a burning ambition to play Hellenic Premier League football and manager Mark Lee has targeted next season as the one in which the club will win promotion.

Towards that aim he has set his players the challenge of finishing fourth in Division 1 (West).

Lee is blunt about it and says: "I reckon we are the fourth best team in the league so we should finish fourth. It's as simple as that."

Manager for the past three seasons, Lee has worked in partnership with Neil Hook for five years and says the club's ambitious plans are based on solid foundations.

"We work well together, share the same ambitions, and have been friends for years. "The club did well in the Premier League but had to drop down because the facilities at Lydney were not good enough. But that's been addressed now and we have everything in place. But, of course, first of all we need to win promotion," he says.

The catalyst to success will, says Lee, be the club's youth policy.

It has already paid off and a number of the present team, including leading scorer Jarrod Liddington and Jake Morgan – who scored twice on Saturday – came through the junior set-up. More are in the pipeline, including Aaron Price and Bailey Hoare.

Setting the team the goal of fourth place, says Lee, means they have to play with greater consistency. He points to the first month of the season as a classic example.

"We won our first three games and then lost the next three. Promotion is achievable but we will need to do better than that," he said.

Describing Saturday's performance as "workmanlike", Lee said games against Malmesbury were always tough and invariably close.

"We were winning comfortably but then let them back into the game and they created a few problems for us. That should not have happened. Personally, I don't believe we ever got out of third gear."

Town's scorers were Jake Morgan (2), Jarrod Liddington and Matthew Tippins.