RAMSBOTTOM United boss Mark Fell believes tonight's East Lancashire derby at Clitheroe is the perfect time for his side to end their away day woes.

The Rams have been in irresistible form at the Harry Williams Riverside Stadium, with their five league wins in front of their own fans helping them to sixth in the Evo-Stik North table.

But United have found it tougher going away from home, with two draws and two defeats, both of which came last week to Mossley and Kendal before Fell's men ended their blip with a 1-0 win at home against Prescot Cables on Saturday.

"We won four of our first six and we then lost at Mossley and we were poor, we got outworked. But how we didn't win at Kendal I've no idea, we did everything but score and we've been done by two set plays," Fell said.

"I wasn't too disheartened by the performance against Kendal and we wanted to get back on track on Saturday. We made sure we weren't going to get outworked and we had the quality to take our chances.

"I don't think many teams will beat Prescot this season, they're going to be in and around the top 10."

The win saw the Rams close the gap on the Cables, who sit one place above them in fifth.

Now they will look for that first away win of the season at Shawbridge tonight against a Clitheroe side who are struggling at the moment.

"We're now on 17 points from nine game. This time last year we had eight. There's no doubting our improvement this year," Fell said.

"The job now is to sort our away form out. We've won all five at home, but we've drawn two and lost two away.

"There's no better time to change that than at Clitheroe in a bit of a Lancashire derby.

"We need to be better away from home. You can't expecting to be challenging at the top end of the table by picking up two points from 12 away.

"Clitheroe haven't had the start they wanted, it's maybe a good time to play them, they got beat by Bamber Bridge last week and lost 4-1 to South Shields at the weekend. We know what they're about, but they did the double over us last year."

Fell will go into tonight's derby with a new striker having signed FC United frontman Tom Greaves on a dual registration.

He believes that addition could be the cutting edge his new need in attack.

"He's a top class striker, he got 94 goals in 200-odd games for FC United, some of those goals in the Conference North. He's a player who has scored goals at a higher level than this," the Rams chief said.

"He'll integrate well with the rest of the lads, he knows a lot of the ex-FC United lads like Jerome Wright, Dean Stott, Greg Daniels.

"He's a number nine and we've struggled for that. We've had Daniels up there, who I think is better as the link-up striker. Tom is an out and out centre forward and we've missed that.

"We worked hard in the summer. It wasn't just about recruiting good footballer, we wanted good characters and the right mix of players.

"We worked hard to get that, we were checking social media accounts of possible signings to check they were good characters."