Daryl McMahon told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster that he might have some new blood for Tuesday night at Maidstone, following his side’s reverse at home to Chester this afternoon.
“Hopefully we should have it done by Monday morning, a player in the squad for Tuesday at Maidstone,” he said, before admitting that his side are still a little short of being a leading contender in the division. “The reality is we’re probably four, five players short of being a really strong outfit in this division that can really go and compete. Over time we’ll accumulate the right players to make us stronger in all the areas we need to get stronger in. We’ve got 18 games to go, we’re sitting in 10th place, I think we could be higher and I think that’s the frustrating thing for all of us. If someone had said to you, you’ve just won promotion, you’re 10th, we’d all say happy days. But I think when we’ve seen the games and seen some of the points that we could have gained that we haven’t, that’s the frustration.”
Frustration was again the name of the game at the Kuflink Stadium as Chester’s first-half goal led to a successful shut-out by the visitors and McMahon was left to rue the opening that handed them their winner.
“You can’t give a team a goal like that when we’re so dominant,” he said. “We give them a head start then it’s a struggle from there in the sense it galvanises them, gives them something to cling on to and they don’t have to come out then. And we’ve got to be better in the final third. It’s bad defending. We have got good players in defence and in goal for us but at the minute it’s not good enough defensively and we’ve got to sort it out quickly. We’ve got to be high seventies, eighties in [percentage] terms of having the ball today and we played some nice stuff but didn’t penetrate enough. In general play, with the ball, we were good. Shields had a decent game, Weston alright, you look across the board and we’ve done alright… but alright’s not enough. We need to win some games and it’s a great game to bounce back on Tuesday.”
The Fleet boss disagreed that Chester’s gameplan worked for them, believing his own side were responsible for their own downfall.
“We gave them a goal, they didn’t work it, simple as that. They didn’t stop us getting into the box, we’ve just got to be better in it. Their gameplan didn’t work, which is nothing against Chester or Marcus [Bignot] and what he did, but if we’d gone in 3-0 or 4-0 at half-time nobody could have complained. So their gameplan didn’t work for me, we’ve just got to be better.
“They had one shot in the second half. When you’ve got Kedwell, Bubb, Powell, Coulson, Weston, Shields on the pitch, Drury, you expect us to create chances. Great save from their keeper to deny Keds and we’ve had numerous little bits around their box, but not enough.”
McMahon was pleased to see Jack Payne back in action after his lengthy spell on the sidelines and he thought the midfielder galvanised his side in the second half. “Payne was outstanding when he came on,” McMahon said. “As soon as he came onto the pitch, we had total control of the game in that 15-minute period after half-time when it, like it always is, settling down again. He kept up his record of very rarely giving the ball away.”
Listen to the full interview below.
https://soundcloud.com/eufcofficial/daryl-mcmahon-after-chester
