The Harriers took on Oxford Utd this evening in front of another poor crowd of 2,663 at Aggborough. Take off the 750'ish that Utd bought and we would be looking at around 1,900.

If people only came to see two teams pass the ball around, make fast, penetrating runs into the box and see a referee make an ass of himself, they would have gone home happy and then come back on Saturday for more.

But they don't, they come to see goals.
One goal, two goals who cares as long as they see some.

And that in a nutshell is why the crowds are dwindling.

I'm sat here writing this at 11:15pm and we could still be out there with the floodlights switched off, the crowd gone home and we still wouldn't have got the ball in the back of the net.

Larkin is not, and never will be, a centre forward. He needs someone big along side him, someone who can knock the ball down to him as he runs off them.

There's only one like that at the club now, Stewart Hadley.
For all his faults, what is he doing keeping the bench warm.

That the game stayed at 0-0 was thanks to Stuart Brock, who again turned in another man of the match performance.

First he got down low to a header from Ricketts, then he punched the ball over from a free kick from the disappointing Moody.

He was only beaten once in the first half when Mark Blake made a goal line clearance to keep United from opening the scoring.

It wasn't all one way traffic though, Larkin was doing his bit by running into the area at every opportunity to meet crosses that were either too high or delivered too late.

Dean Bennett being the main culprit for this.
He must learn to release the ball earlier.

Our best chance of the half came after 26 minutes when Tony Bird brought a good low save from McCaldon in the Oxford goal.

HT. 0-0

In the second half we seemed to back off the Oxford forwards more and slowly they started to take hold of the game.

Moody was now seeing more of the ball and starting to pressure the Reds back line but thankfully they coped.

Brockie saved well from a Thomas effort and then he made another good save from Guyett a few minutes later.

The best chance for the Harriers in this half came when Bennett and Larkin caught the Oxford defence flatfooted and Bennett, with the choice of having the keeper at his mercy or passing the ball to the even better placed Larkin, totally messed it up and the chance went begging.

Then came the miss of the match when another Thomas effort took a wicked deflection off Adie Smith, or was it lucky.
The ball struck the outside of the post with Brockie rooted to the spot on the other side of the goal.

In the remaining few minutes the visitors piled on the pressure but they just could not get past Brockie.

So in the end it all finished disappointingly again.
Lets hope that Jan knows where he can find an out and out striker soon, preferably before Saturday.

FT. 0-0