Leaders North Village are bracing themselves for crucial back-to-back matches against rivals who pose the most serious threat to their hopes of landing a first Premier Division title in nine seasons.Kenny Thompson’s team hold a four-point advantage over second-place Robin Hood, who have a game in hand and could narrow the gap to one with victory over Southampton Rangers in a make-up match at Goose Gosling Field tonight.Village are at home against Hood at Bernard Park in their next league outing on Saturday before making the short trip to St John’s Field to face third-place Dandy Town on February 9.“We have a pretty demanding period coming up and so now the focus turns to this upcoming period,” Thompson said.“We’re pleased with where we are at the moment and we’re definitely not looking too far ahead of ourselves. We’re still going week to week.”Village thrashed basement dwellers Boulevard 7-0 at Bernard Park at the weekend to stretch their unbeaten run in the league to four games.Now they will be looking to exact revenge on a Hood side that inflicted their only league loss this term at Goose Gosling Field last month and make further inroads towards their title aspirations.Thompson is wary of the enormous task at hand, but says his team is up for the challenge.“It’s a big challenge for sure as Hood have been the champions and the second-place team for the last couple of years,” he added. “We’re still building from the previous seasons in which the club hasn’t been on contention so it is a big challenge.“It’s a challenge that we’re very well prepared for and we will be doing detailed preparation for the upcoming match.”The title race remains wide open with only five points separating leaders Village from third-place Dandy Town.“I was predicting that it would be a more wide-open championship than it’s been in the last couple of years just based on looking at some of the moves of players to clubs and the type of squads that each club had,” Thompson said.“I did predict that it would be a more open championship, a championship that we definitely wanted to be in the mix, but there are a lot of teams that are more competitive this season than in previous seasons. “We can’t take any opponent for granted because every week any opponent can be competitive enough to trip you up, so it’s really refreshing that it’s an open championship.”Thompson, who is also the football director of North Village, rejoined the Pembroke club in May last year after a nine-year stint serving in the same capacity at BAA.When asked how the transition has been, he said:” We are having a great time with the overall spirit of the organisation.“The main thing is that everybody is putting in their work to be a part of this, from the administrators through the groundsman, the coaches and of course the players, so we are having a good time with the journey.”