It was a brutally honest Ricky Marheineke that fronted up after St Ives Town's horror show against Royston Town - one that believes his job is definitely under threat.

The manager had just seen his side lose 7-1 at Westwood Road to continue a poor run of results in the Southern League Premier Division Central.

This heavy defeat means Ives are 17th in the table with no wins in their last eight league games and while his mind is already turning to Tuesday's trip to Leiston, he admits that something needs to change in the squad and fast.

"I’ll be lucky if I’m still in the job this time next week," he said in a moment of honest reflection.

"It looks like some of the players are not playing for me, it looks like some of the players are not playing for the club.

"We have got a very talented group but they are simply making decisions that good players shouldn’t be making.

"That is because some of them don’t care and it is my job to weed them out and change the squad where necessary.

"I expect us to be better on Tuesday and we’ll take it game by game from there."

The eight winless games are a far cry from the start of the season which opened with seven points from a possible nine.

And Marheineke says they are their on worst enemies at times.

He said: "I’m scratching my head as to how the group of players we’ve got keep conceding the goals we’re conceding. It’s beyond me.

"We’re weak mentally and we need to snap out of it and either turn it around or unfortunately I’m going to have to change the squad.

"All I can do as manager is set the teams up and give them the information that we know.

"Six of the seven goals are individual errors and that is week in, week out, and it is not just happening to one player.

"It’s not acceptable."

It is a situation he has tasted before though and he knows that there needs to be a reaction from his players.

He said: "When you are in a position like this, when you are so low on confidence, the important thing is to score first and to try and stay in games, be hard to beat.

"Goals change games whenever they are scored but when you go one goal down, you are still in the game and your game plan doesn’t change.

But one goal leads to two against us and that is what has been happening.

"That squad should have been good enough to win the game, or certainly be a lot more competitive than we were."