'Keep it going', Walker urges players

Walker's painstaking rebuilding of the Sky Blues is slowly beginning to show signs of taking shape and the manager insists he wants to see the club continue to progress.

"There's a saying which I coined many years ago in my business life that when you find a job you like, you'll never work again. You wouldn't consider this job to be travail, but rather a pleasure.

"I'm really blessed with the people I work with at this club. That's not a trite comment – if I didn't mean that I wouldn't say it.

"I'm attracted to people, not to positions. Someone recently called me 'Mr Walker'. I said 'that's my dad...I'm Roy'.

"If you were here during the week, you would see there's more of a smile on people's faces than not.

"It's the people who make a club and we're trying build a brand and an identity.

"Someone had written an article a couple of weeks ago saying that Ballymena were the only provincial club in the top six of the league table.

"When I think about the area and the population, it's a football town and with what we have, we should be aspiring to be the top provincial club and if we achieve that then by definition, it will take us fairly close to where people want us to be."

A much shorter-term target for Walker is to cement United's position in the top half of the Carling Premiership this Saturday (3pm) when they entertain a Glenavon side who have gone into freefall after a promising start to the campaign.

"Glenavon have a good record here but we believe in our players.

"It will be a different type of game and there will be a different shape to Glenavon than Linfield.

"We need to sit down and look at what we do. Over the last number of games I have tweaked the team – they have only been minor adjustments but those changes have been made based on who we have been facing and where I thought we could hurt other teams or where we needed shored up – it's horses for courses.

"If we match them physically, then hopefully our ability can come through and enable us to get a result which will keep us in the right sort of area in the table.

Despite scoring three goals in each of United's last four games, Waker has called for more goals.

"I don't want to be a detractor but we're not scoring enough of the chances we're creating.

"We're making chances, which is good, and we're putting the ball into the box but we need to be a little more assertive in front of goal."

Walker also hinted that keeper Dwayne Nelson's position could be under threat after his blunder in Saturday's 3-3 draw with Linfield when he punched a free kick into his own net for the Blues' second goal, particularly with Ryan Brown available again after recovering from a broken bone in his hand.

"Ryan played for the Reserves on Saturday and came through the game well.

"There's another reserve game at Glenavon on Wednesday night which Browner will play in and if he comes through that, he could well come into contention for Saturday," the manager added.

Seven Towers Supporters' Club has named winger Eamonn Murray as its Player of the Month for October. The award was sponsored by Morrison Flooring Contractors.