WITH four points, two clean sheets and a goal to show for his week's work, you'd expect Chester defender Simon Grand to be happy after a fine performance helped Chester hold league leaders Chorley to a goalless draw on Saturday.

But with the Blues still chasing an improbable late surge into the National League North's play off places, the experienced centre back knows that draws aren't good enough if Chester are going to breach the five point gap between themselves and the top seven with just six games to go of an up and down season.

"I'm gutted about today," said Grand, following Chester's second goalless draw this season with the high flying Magpies. "We've been saying we feel we need to win every game and we felt we did enough to deserve the win.

"I've come into the dressing room and said I'd rather not deserve it and win because that's how important it is now. If you compare us with Chorley over the 180 minutes and consider how good they've been, I think we've deserved six points from the two games and it's a credit to us and shows that with the lads we're now getting back if it hadn't been for injuries we would have been competing up there."

Despite the disappointment, Grand, who scored the winner in Wednesday's win at Darlington, believes Chester can use the performance against Chorley as a springboard for the remainder of the season.

"We have to go into these last few games thinking 'let's win them all'," he said. "We were out on our feet at the end because we gave so much and normally we'd be thinking that's a good point but we have to gamble and win.

"It's been a good week and we've worked hard and put two good performances in. Chorley deserve every bit of credit for where they are in the league and how hard they are to beat but if you look at it over the two games we've been the better team and they've had to dig in and get the point against us."

Next up for Chester is a trip to bottom of the league Nuneaton Borough who earned their first win since December with a 4-0 win at fellow strugglers FC United of Manchester following the news that the club had been saved after a winding up order was dismissed in the High Court.

"There are no easy games in this league," said Grand. "They're fighting for their lives and they've had a big boost financially this week. It's a long journey as well so it's a case of working hard in training because these last few weeks have been a massive boost for all of us which has showed in the two performances.

"You can't go into training and you can't go into games thinking the play offs are not on. All we can do now is think 'let's go win every game'.

"I think if you had hand picked at the start of the season your last away games being against the teams that are down the bottom you couldn't have picked better but the way the season has gone they've ended up tough fixtures.

"We've just got to back ourselves because there's always that one team that hits form and just makes the play offs and there the ones that are always dangerous and that's what we've got to aim for."