Cambridge draw the curtains on the play-offs

Yet another poor display saw the Harriers slump to their third defeat in a week and possibly start to drift out of the reckoning for the play-offs.  This 3-1 home defeat to a sharp looking Cambridge showed us how far away from actually looking any good we really are and that we are not capable of improvement on what we are now.

Once again our forward line looked lethargic and it wasn't until ten minutes from the end that I noticed that Justin Richards was on the pitch.  I didn't see a midfield either come to that.

The only two changes from the side that failed so miserably at home to Northwich on Sunday were Dean Bennett and Brian Smikle returning to the starting eleven at the expense of Darryl Knights and Michael Carr.  If we were hoping for wholesale changes to the side then we didn't get it, just a tinkering and replacing un-inspiring like with like.

The game started scrappily for both sides as they found their feet but it wasn't long before Utd claimed the advantage albeit from an extremely dodgy penalty.  It started with a mistake from Adam Bartlett when he kicked a clearance straight at Scott Rendell.  The Cambridge striker managed to gain control of the ball with Keith Lowe attempting to intervene at the same time.  Lowe only touched Rendell slightly and the forward made a meal of it and fell into the box.

Cambridge were on top now and pressurised our back four continuously by exposing our lack of pace and our lack of ability in passing the ball to one of our own players.  In the end it was left to Lowe and Armstrong to just boot the ball away to safety every time a Cambridge player came near them.

On the stroke of the half hour Utd went two up.

Jai Reason played the ball through to dangerman Rendell who then forced Bartlett to parry the ball away into the path of Chris Holroyd.  With his back slightly to goal Holroyd hooked the ball over his shoulder and into the net.

The Harriers looked a despondent bunch now but the home fans were still trying to gee them up to better things. It didn't seem to work at first and we continued to lose out in midfield and our lone striker, MBH, was getting no-where.

And that's where our solitary goal came from.  No where!

Brian Smikle got hold of the ball and, forgetting all his coaching, ran with the ball before releasing it to Andy Ferrell who in turn actually passed it to his own team mate.  MBH easily slotted the ball past the stationary Danny Potter.

For the remainder of the half we started to play with a bit of long overdue self belief and Utd found themselves on the back foot.  We were now playing as a team and it was Martin Brittain doing most of the inspirational stuff around the box.  It was looking better for the second half.