Peterhead defender David Wilson is targeting the next three games to help push the Blue Toon away from the lower reaches of League One.
They face Clyde at Broadwood on Saturday, the team directly below them in the table, before taking on bottom side East Fife and seventh-placed Dumbarton.
Things appear to be moving in the right direction for Peterhead again after back-to-back wins, beating Queen’s Park 2-1 then seeing off Civil Service Strollers in the Scottish Cup.
Jim McInally’s side have had a stop-start campaign so far but Wilson sees the next three games as a crucial opportunity to amass points.
He said: “The next three league games are massive. It’s three teams round about us, after playing the top six in our last six games.
“We took eight points from those games so it wasn’t a disaster but there’s no point doing it against teams higher in the league, if you’re not going to beat teams around you.
“If we take seven or nine points out of our next three games we can start looking up the table and put a bit of distance between us and teams at the bottom.
“The Queen’s Park result was a massive one for us. If we lost that, we’d be sitting second-bottom.
“I don’t think a lot of people outside ourselves would have seen that coming. We’ve shown we play well at Balmoor and it’s difficult to put your finger on why our form has been so different away from home.
“In this league, if you can string three or four wins together you’re looking more at where you want to be in the table. It makes a huge difference when teams are taking points off each other.”
After the win at Christie Gillies Park last weekend, Peterhead were handed a home tie in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup against East Kilbride.
Wilson added: “It’s a home draw, which is the main thing, and I assume they’ll be of a similar level to Strollers.
“It’s a winnable game but they will think the same, so we need to show our quality on January 22.
“There’s all the big teams in the competition now. It’s all well and good playing them but if you’re just going to get beat then the cup run is over. You want to progress as far as you can.
“It’s definitely one of the better ties we could have got but as we saw from the results at the weekend, with Banks o’Dee and Auchinleck, it’s not a gimme.”
Since his arrival at Peterhead in October, Wilson has made a positive impact as part of a back three with Jason Brown and And McDonald.
He added: “I played with Andy at Elgin and I travel with Jason, so there’s a good link between the three of us.
“It’s three defenders who want to defend. It allows Flynn (Duffy), Josh (Mulligan) or whoever is playing wing-back to get forward.”