Ahead of Tuesday’s league game at home to Kettering, manager Tim Flowers has talked about the match and given an update on a player departure. He starts with reflections on the weekend’s draw with Real Bedford…
It was a terrific performance at Real Bedford from everybody involved – very, very good. We both knew a bit about each other – they’re a fantastic team that can really hurt you if you’re not set up right and you don’t defend properly. We were excellent – there’s no doubt whatsoever that we fully deserved a point at least and, probably in fairness, should have taken all three.
We were good with and without the ball, and asked questions of them when we had it. They were quite high lined and we could put the ball in for runners from deep, but we could play too – we have boys that can do both.
They can hurt you, but we managed to put a lid on that and limit it – Breeds made a couple of saves in the first 20 minutes of the second half when they were on top. When we came out for the second half, I thought they may have changed a bit and had a little bit more energy but once we got a handle on that and got back into the game ourselves, then I felt we carried the major threat really. An excellent performance and a very good result – but one that could have been even better.
We move onto Kettering; who are a very good team. They’ve mixed their systems up in the past few weeks and played with a similar system to ourselves or a 4-3-3 against Halesowen on Saturday. Set plays are a big threat, with good delivery – Ty Fleming is scoring a lot of goals for them, and they’ve got other big physical boys in there and we’ll have to deal with that.
But, we’ve also got to play our stuff – we’re a good football team, who can play any way that is needed. It’s a big game – when we’ve come out of this month, we’ll have played pretty much all of the top seven teams. We’ve had a tough run and we’ve stood up to the tests – we’ll take it from there.
In terms of the squad, Josh Toluwaloju has gone back to Coventry and gone to Harborough on loan. He’s jumped a league and played 20 minutes for them on Saturday – he’s a great kid and we wish him well. Kieron Freeman is now available, and Jake Jervis made a return to first team action on Satuday, which is fantastic, and he played very well. Other than that, we need to keep this tight squad fit and well.
