Time for a change

The Harriers depressing run continued with this shambles of a defeat to Rushden and now it's serious.  Since January 31st, when our better players left, we have looked like a team lacking in confidence, in striking ability, lacking in defensive composure and worst of all not wanting to play for their manager any longer.

We, the fans, have suffered silently for too long now and the time has now come for Mark Yates to consider his future as the manager of Kidderminster Harriers FC.

After being told that Saturdays defeat against Salisbury was down to players playing for themselves, and not the team, Yates promised changes along with yet another kick up the arse.  What we saw tonight was basically a repeat of Saturday.

We dominated the first twenty odd minutes and I would have estimated the possession to be along the lines of 99% for us and 1% for Rushden.  The only problem with all that possession was that we just hadn't got a clue what to do with it!

We have gone from a team with four strikers in January to a team with one, Christie, sat on the bench.  Our other striker, Matt Barnes-Homer was, like his manager, clueless playing up front all by himself.  Yes, we'd gone with the lone striker at home idea again - well it worked at Burton remember?

The Rushden goal came out of the blue when our defence stood waiting for the offside flag to go up as two Rushden forwards sped through not believing their luck and how gullible the referee was.  The man with the ball drew MacKenzie out and then side footed it to Jon Challinor who had the simple task of tapping the ball into the empty net.

Heads dropped.  Game over!

The stats had now gone to something like 55% v 45% and we still hadn't had a decent shot on target.    Our best chance came with a wasted free kick from McGrath after he let it drift aimlessly over the wall towards the Rushden keeper and when a blatant penalty was turned down by both the referee and the linesman after a Rushden man fell on the ball in the area and then pushed the ball out of play with his hand.

Soon after we were two goals down when Creighton bought down Andy Burgess on the edge of the area and Gooding stepped up to take an identical free kick to the one taken earlier by McGrath.  This one drifted over our wall and also our keeper.