My players need to start winning their own personal battles, fumes Nott

Sunday 22nd August 2010

MAIDSTONE UNITED manager Peter Nott questioned his side’s character following their poor 2-0 opening day defeat at Harrow Borough yesterday, writes Stephen McCartney.

The Stones appear to be struggling with takeover speculation going on in the background off-the-pitch and they went into their new Ryman Premier League campaign with a poor pre-season record, winning just one solitary game out of ten outings, and despite a lengthy injury list, they surrendered defeat at Earlsmead, courtesy of goals from Rocky Baptiste and a Simon Glover own goal.

Nott, who was speaking in an audio interview on www.maidstoneunited.co.uk was clearly angry with the lack of passion from his players.

“We didn’t compete all over the pitch,” he bemoaned. “We were second best. I’m not faulting the effort but I’m just faulting where people are out are not winning their own battles.

“I said to the boys I’m looking for that nasty, horrible person somewhere in that team who is going to start winning their battles, demanding and making statements out on that pitch and demanding if from his mate, but we are lacking those characters at the moment and we’ve got to find those very, very quickly.”

The Stones only escaped relegation on the penultimate game of last season and Nott wants his side to buck their ideas up to climb up towards his target of midtable security.

“This league in particular is a physical league and the teams that do well are the ones that can equip themselves and I’ve seen players out there today that have shied away from tackles and you can’t do that. You can’t carry people at this level.

“We try and have some flair players but people have to be winning their battles to get the ball to them.

“We just lacking the strength and character and it can’t continue like that because we’ve got to get out there and start getting some wins under our belt.

“We’ve had a dressing down in there and I said if there’s any player who feels their personal score would have been more than five out of ten today? My expectations would be a bit higher than that and no-one has scored more than five our of ten today.

“It wasn’t lack of effort today, everyone’s gone out there but they haven’t performed or they haven’t had that will-to-win, to think I’ve got to be better than my opponent.

“We’re too nice. I’ve got a team of nice boys. I don’t want a team of nice boys! They can be nice and well behaved doff the pitch but when you cross that line you change and become so committed to the game and you become a nasty character.

“I said I’ll handle the nasty characters all day long. I’ll keep them on the right side of what’s right and what’s wrong but you’re not even posing me any problems at the moment as you’re far too nice as a team.”

Tony Dolby brings his Hastings United side to Homelands Stadium on Tuesday night - and Nott demands a positive reaction in front of the home faithful.

He said: “I’ve said to the boys, I think today the 2-0 scoreline was kind to us. If we play like that (against Hastings) it’ll be worst than last year when they gave us a good hiding.

“I’ve asked them to analyse their performance over the weekend, hopefully they’ve listened to some of the things that I’ve said to them in terms of questioning their commitment, ability and will-to-win and we’ve got to see a good performance again.

“As soon as we went 1-0 down you could see the heads drop. We’ve got to look at a way where we become more solid as a unit and we’re a hard team to play against. The only way we’re going to do that is we press as a team, we shut people down as a unit, force mistakes out of people. At the moment we give the ball away so much.

“We never had a chance to get on the ball as we was under pressure all the time.

“Maybe we need to set up a little bit differently and be more ready for the game that we’re going to get.”

Nott confirmed that Ashley Ulph, Mark Corneille, Jermaine Darlington, James Peacock and Nick Davis are all out of the Hastings game, although Peacock and Davis are expected to play a reserve team game away to Herne Bay on Wednesday.

Quotes courtesy of www.maidstoneunited.co.uk

Maidstone United v Hastings United

Ryman Premier League

Tuesday 24th August 2010

Kick Off 7:45pm

at Homelands Stadium, Ashford Road, Kingsnorth, Ashford, Kent TN26 1NJ