SHhape up ... or get on your bike. That is the stark warning for the Eastbourne Eagles riders ahead of the Elite League clash with Coventry at Arlington Stadium.

Boss Jon Cook is still backing his team to get it right, but after five straight defeats time is running out for the current crop of Eagles to prove they are made of the right stuff.

Cook said: "It's all about beating Coventry now and Wolverhampton the week after so that we can go into the first Grand Prix break knowing this is the right team."

Cook says he still has confidence in the reshaped Eastbourne squad to do well this season but he admits: "If there is no improvement in the next two weeks, we will have to look at the situation."

Coventry, like Eastbourne, have made a wretched start to the season, although they did notch their first win earlier this week at home to Peterborough 53-42 when the visitors lost both Lee Richardson and Lukas Dryml through injury during the meeting.

The Bees, who challenged unsuccessfully for the league with big guns Billy Hamill and Greg Hancock for several years, went for a different approach this time with Andreas Jonsson preferred to both Hamill and Richardson from last year's squad.

So far, the move has come unstuck, and Cook concedes: "It's a good time for us to be meeting them. If we can't beat Coventry at home, we do have a problem."

Cook has revealed that the Arlington track was prepared with more dirt than usual before last week's 50-40 hammering by Poole at the insistence of world champion Nicki Pedersen.

Cook said: "To a great extent, we were the authors of our own downfall. Nicki asked Bob Dugard to prepare the track with more grip, but it backfired on us.

"We won't be going down that road again. In future, I think we'll leave it to the expert.

"We have several riders who are struggling at the moment like Ulrich (Ostergaard) and Edward (Kennett), and the track needs to be smooth and not particularly grippy to give them a chance. The better riders should be able to cope with any sort of surface."

The Eastbourne boss defended Ostergaard, Kennett and Peter Ljung.

He said: "It's not all about the riders who are struggling. We knew they would take time to settle into the team at this level. Our top riders are not getting the points they should. That's the difference at the moment."

Adam Shields, who began the year as No. 2 in the Eastbourne averages, has been particularly disappointing, but he must have got a huge boost when he finished an impressive third with Pedersen in the Elite League best pairs event at Swindon on Easter Sunday.

The Eastbourne pairing topped their group and only went out to the eventual winners, the home-track pairing of Leigh Adams and Charlie Gjedde, in the semi-finals.

Pedersen and Shields then beat Peterborough's Richardson and Dryml in the consolation final, while Adams and Gjedde took the title against the Belle Vue pairing of Jason Crump and former Eagle Joe Screen.

Shields said: "It was no good hiding. I knew the only way to get out of this patch was to ride my way out of it, and coming third at Swindon has given me a massive boost."

Eastbourne will be unchanged for the visit of Coventry, whose main riders are now Jonsson and Billy Janniro, the all-action American who rode for Eagles in the 2002 play-off final and was a one-time target for Eagles.

The visitors will use rider replacement for new signing Morten Risager, who has a Danish under-21 meeting, and also include American Bryan Yarrow, who made his English debut in last winter's Brighton Bonanza.

The start is at 7.30pm.