Poor Harriers continue with the depressing results

The Harriers wretched start to the season continued with this performance at home to league leaders Forest Green Rovers today.  This was one game that the long suffering fans thought that we might have got a result from, what with our improved showing at Gateshead last Saturday and the fact that the unbeaten run that Rovers are on had got to come to an end soon, but it was never going to happen and no amount of excuses can hide the fact that we have only won two games and drawn five in 2015.  A grand total of eleven points from a possible seventy five.

To be honest that isn't just poor, it is wretched.

Today, even though Forest Green didn't look like world beaters we made them look that way with just one shot on target for us and some good saves from the keeper, Alex Palmer, to keep the visitors from racking up a shed load of goals.

With Reece Styche on the bench, following suspension, we thought that Gary Whild would build on the talents of Singh and play two up front but yet again it was poor old Singh, or any striker come to that, feeding on the scraps of a ball hoofed up the park at them.  It doesn't work and never will with the type of strikers employed by this club.

The first half was scrappy from both sides but the main threat was still coming from Rovers through the very fast Kurtis Guthrie and the battling Keanu Marsh-Brown.  At the back David Pipe was controlling the forward runs of Tahvon Campbell so superbly that he was hardly getting a look in and eventually tired.

For us, apart from Campbell being our best player, Andy Fox and Adam Dawson were trying hard to make something from the scraps but that was then being undone by other, more experienced players, not doing their bit and contributing anything of quality.

Guthrie had a chance of scoring after fifteen minutes and again twenty minutes in but Palmer was there to stop any threat from the Rovers man.  He was there again to stop Aaron O'Connor bundling the ball over the line after first fumbling it and then O'Connor falling over his own feet trying to push the ball home.

The Harriers hadn't tested Jonny Maxtead, in the Rovers goal, once in the first forty five.  We were at home?

The second period bought renewed hope knowing that in the second half the Harriers are normally more up for it.  That's how it started again but sadly that was when Forest Green scored their opening goal.

Adam Dawson was the driving force behind our early second half showing after having been marked out of the game in the first half.  He tried a shot from twenty yards out that forced Maxted into his first and only save of the game.

Kurtis Guthrie, by far the best player on the pitch, had another chance to score but his shot was dragged wide.

Ten minutes into the second period Reece Styche entered the pitch in place of Aman Verma in an attempt to give us a bit more bite up front but it's amazing that he stayed on the pitch for more that two minutes after being fouled by a Rovers player and then going to the referee mouthing off at him about the foul.  Seconds later he was going in hard on the Forest Green man and earning himself a stern lecture in the process.  A stronger ref would have told the idiot to sling his hook.

A minute later and it was game over for Harriers.  As the visitors went forward in massed ranks Elliot Frear sent the ball into the area for one of them and it ended up at the feet of Keanu Marsh-Brown who blasted in an un-stoppable shot into the net.  Palmer didn't even see it coming.

That was yet another difference between us and them with Rovers attacking in numbers continually while we tried to dribble the ball into the area only to meet a brick wall.

They could have scored a second a second later when James Jennings firm header was saved by Palmer but the second wasn't long coming.  Rovers had just bought on Jon Parkin in place of Frear and it was obvious to most that the lentil and carrot gratin wasn't working for the aging forward.  No matter, he scored.

He had only been on the pitch for a minute when a deep free kick from David Pipe was heading for Palmer but for some in-explicable reason when Palmer came for it he could only punch it onto the head of Parkin who directed the ball goalwards to claim all three points.

With the game won Forest Green sat back a bit and allowed the Harriers more time on the ball.  Andy Fox had a chance from distance that went wide and then in the dying minute Andre Wright took aim but Maxtead was there to secure the ball safely.

We now have another chance to get our first win on board at Tranmere on Monday but even against a team that have lost two games in a row I don't think we stand an earthly if we continue to play the negative rubbish served up so far this season.  Something has got to improve very soon otherwise the natives will be drifting away.  They're already getting restless.

 Goals for FGR: Marsh-Brown 64, Parkin 72

REFEREE:

Mr R Jones Cheshire