We must cut out our mistakes, says Lovell

Monday 08th February 2010

ASHFORD TOWN boss Steve Lovell hopes his side’s bad luck ends when fellow strugglers Whitstable Town visit Homelands Stadium on Wednesday, writes Stephen McCartney.

Third-from-bottom Whitstable arrive on the back of an embarrassing 7-1 defeat at Leatherhead at the weekend, whilst Lovell’s side suffered an unlucky 2-1 home defeat to Walton & Hersham.

“Well, again, it’s the usual format of our games,” Lovell told www.kentishfootball.co.uk.

“We give them two goals, two mistakes, two goals. They didn’t do anything else apart from that.

“We controlled all of the second half and end up losing 2-1, so it’s the same old story really. We’re giving too many goals away, too many mistakes, stupid mistakes really.”

Lovell added: “People don’t mean to make mistakes. It’s just the luck of the draw. The one Saturday, Scotty, the keeper, has kicked the ball out off the deck, it’s hit their centre forward somewhere and gone into the net.

“If it was us the ball would have gone anywhere, but it’s gone past Scott and trickled into the net.

“People don’t mean to make mistakes but they happen. It always seems to make goals when we make them.

“Everybody has their fair share of luck during the season - but we haven’t, regarding injuries and goals we’ve given away.

“When you’re down there it happens. You have to roll your sleeves up more, dig in and turn it around.”

Whitstable, meanwhile, are smarting from their woeful display at Leatherhead and arrive at Homelands sitting six points above Lovell’s men.

“I think it’s a big game for both clubs,” said Lovell. “We’re both down at the bottom. Looking at it there’s four, possibly five teams that are in with a shout for relegation at the moment.

“Any team you play at the bottom is a must-win, so I think it’s a big game for both teams and it will be a massive game for the players. The players won’t need motivating on Wednesday and they exactly know what’s needed.

“Whitstable are coming back from a 7-1 defeat on Saturday and they will want to put that right.

“They need to respond but it’s easier said than done. It happened to us the first game of the season.”

Big-spending Croydon Athletic thumped Ashford 7-0 on the opening day of the season and Lovell knows players need picking up after such disastrous performances.

“That’s the whole point, the manager has to try and instil a bit of confidence in them,” he said.

“I don’t know what the situation was with the Leatherhead-Whitstable game, how they lost 7-1, I don’t know what mistakes were made, but when we lost to Croydon, again, it was individual errors so you work on that and try to stop those individual errors. You work on things to make sure they don’t happen again.”

Ashford go into the game rock bottom in the Ryman League Division One South table with two wins and eight draws from their 23 league games.

“We knew they were going to be tough times but we didn’t envisage they would be this tough,” said Lovell.

”You can handle it when you’ve got a full squad to choose from and able to work with them on a weekly basis, but when you lose six or seven players every game it’s doubly hard.

“It is possible to bring players in but at the end of the day you’re bottom of the league. Unless players aren’t playing at another club they won’t want to come.

“It’s alright going up to the Conference South and picking players up if you’ve got the finances to do it.

“We brought Craig Cloke in from Dover as they have done us a favour. That’s the only reason why we’ve brought him in. We’ve got enough players - if their fit - so we go from having 17-18 one day to having 12 players on the next day.

“It’s a strange situation at the moment, but we just need to pick up a win and go from there.”

Visit Ashford Town’s website: www.ashfordtownfc.co.uk

www.kentishfootball.co.uk will be covering this game.

Ashford Town v Whitstable Town

Ryman League Division One South

Wednesday 10th February 2010

Kick Off 7:45pm

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