After Welling United’s defeat at Maidenhead United, co-caretaker manager Harry Wheeler gave his views.

He didn’t hold back on his disappointment. “The first half isn’t anything to be proud of.” he said. “Momentum-wise it was a little bit of a repeat of Whitehawk and I don’t know why. They had the wind and the hill as well but at the same time, players have got to compete and show a little bit of desire, a little bit of passion and we didn’t at the times when it was most required.

When you go one nil down, that’s the time to start showing up and they went missing for a little bit. After that, the injuries haven’t helped, losing your two centre halves is a big blow. We ended up with one of our normal back four as Matt Fish was out anyway.”

Although scant consolation, he felt that there was a slight improvement after the break. “Second half, all we did was ask them to come out with a little bit of pride and a little bit to play for otherwise it was going to be six, seven or eight and no-one wants that.”

He continued “ To try and draw the second half 0-0 wasn’t an objective, but at least we can come out of it with a little bit of respect for ourselves, a tiny bit.”

Wheeler also stated that he was pleased to have a midweek game ahead. “The best thing is that we’ve got a game on Tuesday.” he continued, qualifying the comment with “ It’s always the best thing, when you lose a game, is to go and play again straight away so Tuesday night at Eastbourne, it will be a tough game away but one that is easily winnable. “

Hopefully, we’ll build on the second half and we’ll be better than we were, especially first half, and we’ll be better than we were second half and on Tuesday we’ll put in a better performance.”

There was a particular concern with Welling’s defending from the front. Wheeler said.“Ball retention. If you don’t hold the ball up and it keeps coming back, defenders are doing 80% more defending than they should do. If it keeps coming back and they’re defending that much eventually, they’re going to get through at one point, especially a side with the best goalscorer (Dave Tarpey) in the league.

“The forwards didn’t help massively although Harry Crawford worked really hard. Alex (Cathline) is a good player but he didn’t show too much today. Defending from the front needs to be improved but more in terms of our ball retention when we’re in possession.

“I thought that Rhys (Murrell-Williamson) had a poor game today. The problem with Rhys is that you get ups and downs. Last Saturday he was excellent, today was the opposite. That is what you get with Rhys. On Tuesday night he’s either going to be excellent or he’s going to be the same again, hopefully he’s going to be the first of them.”

.An example of that was conceding again so soon after the first when Welling were on the attack. “The second goal was a calamity.” He complained. “Rhys gave the ball away coming inside then Ali (Fuseini) gave the ball away then Dan (Walker) came out of a tackle that he shouldn’t have come out of and they’ve gone through and scored.

“That’s what I’m talking about when I say desire. You can’t accept that and we’ve got to do a little bit more. We’ve made sure that they know that’s not acceptable. We’ve made it very clear.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.