Nathan Haslam was understandably frustrated and very disappointed when he spoke after Saturday’s FA Vase defeat. “It wasn’t nice, we knew exactly what Barnoldswick were going to do. We knew their set piece routines, we knew the danger men. We went through it extensively before the game but we’ve been unlocked by a player who we really knew what to do with, and that’s not acceptable. We created very little and it’s like I’ve said before, goals change games and Brad’s gone through beat the keeper and I don’t know how he’s put it wide to be honest. Things like that do change the complexion of a game and pretty much every game we’re playing, we’re getting early chances and then teams are punishing us. Yes, we haven’t created a lot. We pushed on a little bit we did a little bit more in the second half but we’re just really inconsistent. We’re not putting in enough performances. You can’t legislate for mistakes and Callum Anderson has been arguably our best player this season and by quite some way. It’s just a long ball and he’s misjudged it and they’ve punished us and we go 1-0 down. We came out second half and go a bit more attacking, put Sparky on. Then they score by a cheap set piece, and we knew what they were going to do, and that changes the complexion of the game. They’ve got something to defend. He (Dale) went straight through, we’ve watched them three times; we have two videos of that exact set piece that we’ve all watched before the game. We knew exactly who was marking him but he still got through and scored. They’d got four set pieces and they tried them all, we got caught out by that one.
“The lads have got to be better. We’re doing everything from the preparation point of view but when they step over the white line they’ve got to be a lot more switched on. On paper we are a much stronger team but they’ve had a good day today. Today they’ve done a good job on us, their set pieces have come off and we haven’t been good enough by a long way on the day, so fair play to them.”
When asked about the two new signings going straight into the starting eleven he explained “ We need to start creating more, I think Connor Smith showed glimpses of what he can do and Mark Robinson has worked his socks off, but it’s not about individuals. It’s a team game and when one or two cogs aren’t working it starts changing the shape, and there were probably only four of our lads today, and that includes the subs, where we could say ‘you’ve done your bit today’. It isn’t consistent enough from our lads unfortunately.
“It would be nice to go into a game every week and pick the same eleven but consistency levels aren’t there. We’re having a good game – we’ve had two good ones, but then a bad one. We’ve got to work on it, consistency‘s the big thing for us. So should we have played the same 11? Not necessarily, we knew their wide man was very, very quick which was why McFarlane went to right back. It would be ideal to get Shanksy starting games but he just isn’t quite fit enough yet. Would he have seen 90 minutes out? No he wouldn’t.”
Looking ahead to the next game on Wednesday night, he added “They’re all tough games. Guisborough are having a great season but it’s the type of place we can go and do well. Away from home we look great, we look fresh and we’re moving the ball around well.”
