Stuart Delmonte has warned his Manchester Maccabi boys they face a daunting challenge when they take on title chasing Ring O’Bells.

Delmonte was left frustrated at his side’s dismal display during last Sunday’s 3-1 home league defeat by Silver Springs.

And the Maccabi boss is demanding a huge improvement as they look to bounce back against one of the favourites for the league championship.

“Ring O’Bells are a very, very good team and a lot of their players play semi-professional football,” he said.

“It’s going to be very tough for us but I’d rather play difficult games every week and lose rather than win by five or six each week and believe we’re better than we are.

“Last week wasn’t good enough and I’d say ten out of the 11 played below par and that’s really not good enough.

“We probably played football for about ten minutes and the rest of the time we just gave the ball away and our passing was all over the place.

“It was a bad team performance and we can’t afford to do that again on Sunday because we’ll be in trouble if we do.

“But it’s early in the season and so it’s not going to cost us too badly, I hope.”

Following an encouraging opening day victory over Hartshead, Maccabi had hoped to make it two wins out of two but they were left wanting as Silver Springs cruised home.

Adam Wilson’s 25-yard finish was the only bright spot on a disappointing afternoon for Delmonte, who is now hoping lessons will be learned from a turbulent afternoon.

“I know we hit the post twice and scored a goal but the right team won,” he added.

“We need to bounce back now and hopefully we’ve got that bad display out of our system and we can learn from it and move on.”