DAVE Penney has demanded that Darlington show their ruthless streak against League Two strugglers Barnet after seeing his side slip up against some of the division’s lesser teams.

Last Saturday’s 1-0 reverse at Morecambe followed disappointing results against unfancied Chester and Rotherham, suggesting Quakers struggle against teams fighting for their lives at the lower end of the League Two table.

“A problem we’ve had is not being able to raise our game against the teams lower down the table. When we had the unbeaten run we played against a lot of top teams and we came out of it having done very well,” said Penney.

“Against the top teams we are fully-focused and on top of our game, we’ve got to make sure it’s the same situation against Barnet.

“We need three points to stop us dropping down the table. We were first and have dropped to sixth, and we need to start picking points up to make sure we stay in that top seven.’’ After a disputed off-side decision robbed Darlington of a place in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy northern final, Penney has spent the last couple of days firing up his players for the league campaign.

But he believes that there was sufficient evidence on Tuesday evening at Rotherham to suggest that his team are returning to the form that took them to the top of the table.

“The league has always been the priority but it would have been nice to be able to look forward to a two-legged final against Scunthorpe.

So now we’ve got to get back to winning league games” he said. “On Tuesday it looked like we had knocked the rustiness out of us which we had on Saturday, but we need to play like we did in the first 45 minutes for the whole 90 minutes.

Another major plus point for Quakers’ boss was the impressive performance by newboy Seb Carole, whose quality is already proving a highly effective link between defence and attack.

“Seb’s got great balance, great feet and great quality. In the first half on the righthand side he caused Rotherham loads of problems and he linked up well with Neil Austin and Billy Clarke,’’ said Penney.

“Playing regular matches at first-team level will benefit him because he played quite a bit for Sheffield United reserves.”

With no new injury concerns, Penney is not expected to make any significant changes to a starting line-up he believes is about to turn performances into results.

“Just because we haven’t had a good result recently people might say we should chop and change, but there’s a lot that’s right and we just need to tinker with a few things and make sure we get back to doing the right things,” he claimed.

“There’s just a few little things that aren’t quite right.

The front two need to link up a little better, and they need to link up with the midfield better rather than trying to do everything by themselves.

“There’s a couple of areas I’m not happy with so it’ll be great to get back to training on grass to iron out a few things.”