Frustration and disappointment are the order of the day once more after another two 1-1 draws, this time at home against Southend and across the Pennines at Halifax.
The disappointment of course comes with the results themselves. Let’s be clear, results currently are not the results of a side going to win promotion.
Draws will not see us challenging right at the top. We need to start turning the draws into wins very soon, starting with an extremely winnable game at Woking on Saturday.
The frustration comes from the performances. As I said on the BPAS Podcast this week, in fits and starts, we look like a very good side. We did against Southend for about half an hour of the second half and we did against Halifax for the first 10 minutes and another 20 minutes or so after the break.
Consistency within matches is entirely eluding us at the moment and, when it’s clear the squad is good enough to do better and, indeed, is performing better than last season, it is frustrating that the lads can’t seem to do it over extended parts of a match and come out with victory.
So where does that consistency come from?
When we are playing well, we are attacking the opposition, looking for opportunities going forward to pen them back and putting them under sustained pressure. This has to be the aim for the team in each game.
Micky Mellon says it is and does get visibly irate when the midfield, especially Tom Conlon and Josh Lundstram, always look for the easy ball instead of getting their foot on it and taking the game by the scruff of the neck.
Somehow though, he needs to start getting his players to play without those shackles and look to get on the front foot.
This is really all summed up by our left wing back, Mark Kitching, being our best attacking player over the weekend and of course he nicked a goal in Yorkshire too.
We need to be cutting down on individual errors such as the marking for the Southend goal and Mat Hudson’s mistake for the Halifax equaliser and also start taking our chances.
We are creating them. In both games, we could have scored at least two or three but were profligate in our finishing, once more.
I still think we are close, and once it clicks we’ll see some results go our way, and comfortably too. But it definitely needs to start clicking soon, before we end up in a chasing pack rather than the leading group of the division.
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