GUISELEY remain perilously close to the drop zone in the Vanarama National League North after a second home defeat on the trot.

The Lions were beaten 1-0 at Nethermoor by Alfreton Town a week earlier and lost by the same slender margin to Southport.

They will have no time to dwell on this result as they head to Curzon Ashton tomorrow night for a rearranged game.

Guiseley and Southport both showed intent as the opening half hour was end to end but neither side carved out any clear openings.

The one real chance of note in the goalless first-half fell to the Lions when the Sandgrounders keeper Dan Hanford made a fine save to deny a Scott Garner header following a 38th-minute corner.

The visitors broke the deadlock seven minutes into the second-half when Jack Sampson took advantage of some poor defending.

The home side had been forced into a change on the team sheet after midfielder Kennedy Digie had suffered a recurrence of a pre-existing injury in the warm-up, Will Hatfield had taken his place in the team with Jack Dyche being drafted into the squad.

Dyche came off the bench to replace Hatfield as the Guiseley management duo of Marcus Bignot and Russ O’Neill tried to freshen up their attack.

Paul Clayton replaced Kayode Odejayi and former Bradford City youth player Akeel Francis came on for Kaine Felix in the other two changes.

But they were unable to prevent another defeat, O’Neill said: “First-half I thought we did alright. I thought we looked a lot more in control than we have, especially in the Alfreton game.

“We passed the ball better when we needed to and came in at half-time in a better place.

"Obviously the results – the draws the defeats, affect the confidence. But we came in and spoke about a bit more quality in the final third and we’ll get the goal.

“We came out second-half and the goal (Southport’s winner) has absolutely knocked the stuffing out of us, and you could see how low we are on confidence when that goal went in and for me, we just stopped playing then.

“We’ve gone with the flow of the game and never looked like getting back on level terms. The warm-up injury was something we didn’t want or need.

“It’s massively important for the supporters to stay behind us – the last few weeks has been horrendous.

"But we’ve got our game in hand, at Curzon and we hope as many of the fans will travel as possible.

“If they get behind us over there and we come out fighting and get those three points I’m sure we’ll feel a lot better about ourselves at 10 o’clock on Monday night.”