By Gavin Perry

Ashington fell to a narrow 1-0 defeat at Guisborough Town on Wednesday evening, however the score does not fully reflect the performance with Ashington dominating large part of the game but failing to put away countless chances.

Here’s what manager Marc Ellison had to say after the final whistle:

“Firstly, I’d just like to say it was a good game of footy, wasn’t it? There was some really good stuff from both sides and, although obviously we’re disappointed with the result, I thought it was a really good game.

Probably since the last time we played Guisborough in the Trophy  I feel like we’ve got better and better with every game, and tonight wasn’t any different really.

It’s tough to stand here after being beaten and try to be too positive, but I genuinely thought the performance, barring the first 10 minutes of the second half, was probably one of or if not the best we’ve produced over the course of the full 90 minutes this season.

Unfortunately, as we all know, playing well doesn’t always win you a game of football, and that old cliché about what happens in both boxes being important has proved to be the difference tonight.

We’ve had the lion’s share of possession, probably had two really good goalscoring opportunities in the first half, and then in the second half we’ve had three, four, maybe even five really good opportunities to score.

We’ve missed the target, had one cleared off the line, had a final pass that just hasn’t quite reached its target, and then we’ve conceded from another set piece.

That’s the frustrating part.

There are obviously things we need to work on, and we will work on them, but if we can consistently produce performances like that, I’m confident the results and points will start to follow.

We’re creating chances, we’re controlling large parts of games and we’re putting ourselves in good positions. We just need to start being more ruthless in both boxes.

I also want to put a bit of context around the bench tonight because, from the outside looking in, it probably looks like we’ve left two attacking players on the bench while chasing the game.

We only had two fully fit substitutes available because of other injuries and work commitments. Noah took a knock on Saturday but has still offered his hand to help, and Hendo is still strapped up and offering whatever he can.

I didn’t think risking further injury to either of them was the right thing to do, particularly when we were still looking dangerous for 90% of the time we went forward.

We’ve got to look after the players as well as trying to win football matches, and sometimes you have to make those decisions.

The frustrating thing is that I genuinely felt we were in the game until the end. We’ve put in a performance against a good side, created enough opportunities to get something from it, but ultimately we’ve come away with nothing.

That’s football sometimes.

We’ve got a really big week coming up after the break, especially this early in the season, and tonight has given us plenty to take from the game.

We’ll be disappointed tonight because we feel we deserved more, but there’s a lot of encouragement in that performance.

Now we need to make sure we carry that level into the next one and turn good performances into points.”