By Brian Bennett
Ashington manager Marc Ellison was naturally disappointed after watching his side go down to a 2-1 defeat against Pontefract Collieries on Tuesday night.
Afterwards, the Woodhorn Lane boss admitted that the West Yorkshire side – who as a result moved into a play off place – were worthy of the points even though his own outfit showed an improved performance from Saturday’s 3-0 loss at Grimsby Borough.
Ellison said: “I can’t really have too many complaints with the result tonight. I think we’ve been beaten by the better team on the night. We got our noses in front, which is obviously great, but if I’m being honest, we didn’t really cause them enough problems which is disappointing. We knew how they play, we knew what they were going to bring and how good they are at doing it, but we didn’t counteract it as well as we’d hoped we could. The equaliser (by Elliott Walker) is one of those where I’m not sure anyone saves it. I’m not even sure if the lad has hit a ball like that in his life. It’s an unbelievable strike and sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and say fair play.”
He continued: “I wasn’t overly concerned with how the first half had played out, but we knew we needed to be better with the ball. At half-time, we spoke about taking more control of the game and trying to have longer periods of possession, but it never really worked out that way. We turned the ball over too quickly and they kept putting the ball into good areas which meant we didn’t manage to take control of the ball for the periods we’d spoken about. Again, Matty (Alexander) has made a few good saves and I think they’ve had two goals chalked off as well, so it’s difficult for me to sit here and complain too much about the result. It’s always difficult to take defeat, especially at home, but unfortunately I just think they were better than us on the night. Sometimes that happens in football.
That said, I do think there were certain periods where we could have been much better, and if we had been, it could have made a difference.”
He added: “Although we haven’t picked up the results I thought we should have at Liversedge, West Auckland and Guisborough, there have been parts of those games where we could take positives and we felt like it was just a case of getting over the line and the results would come. Unfortunately, they haven’t quite worked out that way. Tonight was an improvement from Saturday but ultimately we’ve still come away with nothing again. It’s a really big month, I think there are six or seven games pencilled in, so we need to start picking up points there’s no hiding away from it, we can only do that by continuing to believe, sticking together and making sure everyone is pulling in the same direction.”
He went on: “We also need to give the supporters something to be encouraged by. They’re entitled to expect more from us and we need to give them something to get behind because their support can make a huge difference. Hopefully the squad will be looking stronger at the weekend with a few unavailable bodies coming back, and we’ll also be looking to bring in a few fresh faces if we can and that will help us improve.”