Shortly after the game, Manager Nathan Haslam gave his reaction to the 1-0 defeat at Guisborough. “Obviously I’m disappointed we lost the game but it didn’t go for us in the final third. We’ve had opportunities to score and I can’t ask any more of the lads. It was their best performance of the season by an absolute country mile. We’ve pinned Guisborough in all second half, we’ve created chances, unfortunately for us the goal that counts has come from a couple of errors. It’s an own goal that should never have happened but it did and ultimately that’s why they’ve won the game. In hindsight in an area like that you just clear your lines in those situations but for whatever reasons we didn’t and then when we did try to clear it, it just sheared off one of our own players in the net. Guisborough haven’t even worked hard for the goal, but we’ve done enough in that game to come away with something.”
Haslam acknowledged that Guisborough keeper Ryan Catterick made several outstanding saves to keep his side ahead. “He’s a good keeper, a professional keeper at Hartlepool and he’s earned his corn tonight.
“It’s a bit of a hard luck story but I’ve said to the lads they couldn’t do any more than that. By the law of averages if you play like that every week you’ll win a lot more than you draw or lose, I think we were just unlucky on the night really.
“It was an end to end game; Guisborough are an experienced side, they’ve been together a while. In the first half we were a little bit off the pace for second balls but we were still competing. Second half we were well on top and I think it was more a case of just not putting the ball in the back of the net.”
Whitley have been without a second goalkeeper this season but Steven Hubery was signed earlier in the week and he made his debut, while Dan Lister was on the bench. Nathan explained why Hubery had been brought into the side for this game. “We just need a bit of experience, Dan’s been absolutely brilliant for us but he has hasn’t been pushed, and Steven’s come in to do that. We just thought Dan probably needed to be taken out for a game or two so we brought Steven in. I thought he’s done alright tonight. He couldn’t do anything with the goal. He’s covered his lines so it was a good nice comfortable debut for him.
“We’ve no game this weekend but we’ll be training then we’ve got Hebburn on Tuesday so the lads just need to take that performance into the next game and every game moving forward. We’ll cause any teams problems but as we keep saying every week, we’re creating chances but not putting them in. It’s got to change for us soon, it’s got to because we’re creating too many for it not to!”
