Poor Display Lamented

There were no excuses from Joint Manager Mike Sandmann as he lamented his side’s performance against Haringey Borough on Saturday afternoon.

A second half strike from Georgios Aresti was all it took to separate the two teams with Margate having goalkeeper Henry Newcombe to thank with a great a penalty save to limit the damage from an afternoon Sandmann described as “disappointing”.

“I thought we were really poor, the poorest we’ve been all season. What we’ve spoken about in previous games is about how hard we’ve worked, and we didn’t do that today.”

“We didn’t start well, we didn’t anticipate second balls enough and we let them grow into the game.”

Reflecting on the 90 minutes, Sandmann added: 

“They came and did a job on us, but we’ve got to earn the right to play and create chances and we didn’t do that.” 

“They worked harder than us and in football if you don’t work hard enough first of all, then you won’t get the opportunities. So that’s the most disappointing thing from our point of view.”

Whilst The Gate didn’t create enough attacking opportunities, Sandmann did think there was a strong penalty call which could have affected the result. 

“I thought we looked like a young side today, we looked a bit naive in certain areas. We lost too many 1 v 1s all over the pitch. When you do that, you’re not going to come out on top.” 

“I do think we should have had a penalty, I don’t see what was too dissimilar from our call to the one that was given against us and if that goes in, it changes the story. It was a great save from Henry and he has kept us in the game to try and break them down and grab an equaliser but ultimately you can’t perform like that and expect to win football matches.” 

With an ever-growing injury list, Margate’s management team were forced into an early change and will now lose striker Sid Sollis through suspension. 

“Stephen hasn’t been very well, he thought he was going to be able to get through, but it was clear he wasn’t able to.” 

“Sid needs to learn from his red-card, I think it’s a lack of experience there. He’s been held down, but you cannot react like that. He will be a miss, we didn’t want to change things too much but we’re up against it at the moment."

"We’re not making excuses but losing experienced players and characters like Alex Brown, James Rogers and Tom Wynter is always going to be tough for any group but that's the position we are in and we have to just get on with it.“

Margate are back in action on Monday, travelling to Carshalton Athletic which presents an early opportunity to put Saturday’s performance right.

“I hope we can make amends on Monday. We spoke quite honestly afterwards to the boys that Browny and I expect more.”

“We try and make our instructions and expectations clear and hopefully we see a reaction on Monday evening that will start with how hard we are prepared to work for one another.”

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