By Brian Bennett
Ashington FC manager Ian Skinner was naturally disappointed – but not too down heartened – after reflecting on his sides 5-0 defeat against West Auckland on Saturday.
The boss said that it was not the worst performance of the campaign – highlighted that four of the five goals conceded were avoidable – and that generally it just wasn’t going to be the Colliers’ day.
Speaking afterwards, Skinner noted: “There was a tentative start to the game where both teams wanted to feel each other out knowing that we are relatively close to each other in terms of league positions. If you look at it on chances alone, it’s probably been one where it hasn’t been our day. They (West Auckland) scored five and instantly four of them were avoidable goals caused by individual errors. However I repeat what I said recently – nobody makes mistakes on purpose but unfortunately some of the positions where we have made the errors today have cost us a little bit. We have got good players and they don’t make them mistakes on purpose and then there was a big deflection for the third goal which you can’t do anything about.”
He continued: “Our ‘keeper Karl Dryden will be disappointed but he’s a very good goalkeeper and he’ll continue to be a very good goalkeeper for this football club but its possibly one of those days where Karl will tell you himself that for three of the goals he would probably save them on another day whilst a big deflection wrong foots him and goes in the other corner. But we’ve hit the bar; had two cleared off the line; fashioned a couple of half chances so on chances alone, we’ve probably had as many as West Auckland – but they were that little bit more ruthless and were a little bit slicker and a little bit more clinical than us. At times, we possibly didn’t quite get close enough to them and ultimately that has probably cost us the game.”
He went on: “I’ve got to be honest and say it’s a difficult post match interview to do because we have lost 5-0 and usually after a defeat I would be really, really despondent and disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still disappointed at losing the game but if you process and break things down, although there were things we could have done better, it certainly wasn’t our worst performance of the season. We’ve had a couple of days like that this season where everything we have touched has turned to gold and ended up in the back of the opposition’s net where today we were on the other side of it where everything in terms of chances has gone West’s way a little bit and they’ve had a bit of good fortune on some of them.”
He added: “We’ll dust ourselves down and we have another big game away to Newton Aycliffe on Tuesday night (October 26) and what we have been good at is bouncing back after a disappointment – so we will try to right the wrongs and look for a bit of reaction and try to return to winning ways as quickly as possible. That’s only the fourth time we have lost a league game this season and there will be individuals who will be disappointed with some of the mistakes they have made but they are not done intentionally and we’ll move on.”