MONTEGO BAY, St James — DESPITE the slow start to the National Premier League (NPL) season with just one win from nine games, coaches of the western teams say it is way too early to start pressing the panic button.

Yesterday Pastor Hugh Solomon, the coach of the Montego Bay United FC (MBUFC) team, and Michael ‘Jimmy’ Graham, assistant coach of Reno told Observer West they expected their respective teams to start playing better as of this weekend’s round of matches.

Of the three teams from western Jamaica taking part in the competition, only Reno has managed to score a win so far, when they upset Boys’ Town 1-0 on the opening weekend at Collie Smith Drive. They are now the best placed from the region in eighth place with three points.

Newly promoted MBUFC drew their opening home game against Boys’ Town on the second weekend and has one point and in (11th place), while Village United has lost all three games so far and is on the bottom of the 12 team league.

“Certainly not,” Solomon said, when asked if it was time to start worrying. “It is still early in the season and we have 39 games to play so we are not panicking,” he told Observer West.

“The beauty with MoBay United is that we have been playing good football, but we are just not finishing but we will get it soon,” said Solomon who has served a previous stint at Village United.

He said they had given the team “five games to gel” and said they were ahead of schedule having accomplished this in three games, promising a better performance when they take on Harbour View at the Montego Bay Sports Complex on Sunday.

Reno’s Graham agreed with Solomon that no panic was necessary and said they were forced to use a lot of younger players due to the departure of several players to other clubs during the transfer period.

“Reno is a work in progress” he said “we need to exercise more patience with these youngsters as it is the first experience at this level for a lot of them and we have to be teaching them the game at the Premier League level.”

Graham, a former national player, said he expects the team to get better and get better results, “as the season gets longer the team will get better,” he explained.

Reno will be home to Portmore United on Sunday and Graham said he expects the turn around to begin then, but conceded that the team cannot continue to miss scoring chances and still be competitive, adding “when we start scoring the goals we have been creating, the players will get more confidence moving forward”.

Additionally, the three western teams are at the bottom of the league in scoring goals, Village and MBUFC have managed just two goals so far, while Reno has scored once.