Although Welling United’s four-one defeat at home to promotion chasing Brentwood Town was comprehensive, the score-line probably flattered the visitors. After the match Ryan Maxwell, Welling’s manager, gave his thoughts.

“We started quite sloppy” he said. “It felt as if we were a little bit slow to react but the score-line at one point being three-nil was incredibly false. We’ve hit the post, missed a one v one, the keeper’s made a good save from that one v one. Then the keeper’s made a great save down to his left from John (Ufuah).

“It was a bit of a shock that the score was three-nil at half time but it was from our own doing. They did score from one very good strike, outside the box, but we should have shut that down. That’s what I mean about being a little bit sluggish, but that was the only good goal. We gave the other two away and the fourth one was on the break when we were pushing to make it three-two.

“It was difficult to pick them up (for the second half) you would have thought but actually I knew that we would score with the wind, we were against the wind in the first half. We knew that was going to be the hard half but there was belief in there because we knew that we’d had three great chances. We were having to make our chances but we were giving chances their chances to them. That was the biggest difference.”

Once the players were back in the changing room, Maxwell saw that they knew that they hadn’t done themselves justice. He continued “I was very transparent with them and said that you can’t start like that against the team that’s sitting second in the league. I was feeling confident today. We’ve got some good players in this team that can hurt you, and they did, but I do feel as if we have given them the result rather than having it taken away from us.

“Their goalkeeper has made two very good saves, one great save, and ours hasn’t been busy but has picked it out of the net (four times) so it is a very false scoreline. I think that they know today they threw that away. If we’re talking about coming in at say two-one at half time down, then it is suddenly game on. Plus, with the wind, but you’re talking three-nil and you’ve got a massive mountain to climb.

“We climbed a bit of it by getting to three-one. What is next? That was my next kind of analysis. What do we do next? How do we approach the next bit? We were trying to get the next goal. We made a couple of subs. We were trying to get everybody on, but ultimately we were caught on the break. Maybe we should have had a penalty, I’ve seen them given, but it’s on the break and that’s made the scoreline worse than what it should be. It certainly wasn’t four-one. We had them penned in, we were looking for a penalty and they go up and score.”

Although Brentwood are chasing promotion, Maxwell saw no reason to be afraid of them. “Every game is winnable.” He confirmed. “Today was winnable. They know they threw that away. They’re sitting second in the league, obviously a decent side, but I’ve played many games in this league. I know the level. I know that the team we played today, albeit a good side, are beatable.

“To create the chances we did, we cut them open a couple of times to get them, I feel that’s probably what’s eating away at the players. They know that the opportunities were there to score and they’ve wasted them but that doesn’t detract from giving the goals away. You can’t do that against any side, particularly a good side.”

Image courtesy of Keith Gillard