We have to keep on believing after cup exits (From Worcester News)

We have to keep on believing after cup exits

9:30am Thursday 25th October 2012 in Sport

CUP BLOW: Worcester City’s Lee Ayres pulled up with a knee injury during his side’s 3-1 extra-time defeat to Redditch in the Worcestershire FA Senior Cup quarter-final.

THE playing surface at Redditch for our Worcestershire FA Senior Cup quarter-final defeat was atrocious and, to compound it all, we picked up a few injuries, which doesn’t help.

Lee Ayres felt a pull in the back of his knee — he is suspended for Saturday’s Blue Square Bet North trip to Boston (3pm) anyway — but we also have a league game at home to top-of-the-table Brackley on Monday night and I’m not sure if he’ll be ready to play in that.

Against Redditch, Matt Birley also tweaked his knee, but hopefully that won’t be too bad, and Shabir Khan played two hours with very little football in his legs recently and was dead on his feet at the end.

The game came at a bad time for us and, quite frankly, I could have done without it.

The pitch was a massive leveller and the manner of the defeat was the most frustrating part.

I thought we would beat them 1-0 after Michael Taylor had put us ahead because they didn’t look like scoring, but Lee slipped and they were in to equalise — that’s all it takes, one small mistake.

Their first goal in extra-time was just comical as the ball was lumped forward and their striker was running through expecting it to go to our keeper Matt Sargeant, but it hit their player on the back of the head and looped past Matt and into the goal.

We are struggling injury-wise at the moment — Mike Symons is not quite right and Danny Glover has had a sore Achilles too.

Michael has not played a lot of football recently, so the match sharpness isn’t quite there.

We also went out of the FA Cup with a 1-0 defeat at Bromley on Saturday.

Forget the money that was on the line, because if you are successful and winning games, then the money takes care of itself.

It was about our players winning the chance to pit their wits against full-time pros, but it wasn’t to be.

I felt we dominated the game and passed the ball well, but we have to do that with a purpose and be ruthless — we seldom looked like scoring which is also becoming a bit of a worry recently.

If you’re not scoring goals, it puts more pressure on the defence and one slip can prove to be costly, as it did against Redditch.

We have to keep believing as there is a lot of ability in our squad.

I’d like to think the players will learn from the way we went out of the cup at Bromley and not want to experience that again, but they don’t seem to be learning at the moment.

We’ve not looked a threat in the final third, which is a cause for concern, but the biggest problem at the moment is not having fully-fit players to call upon up front.