Ahead of Tuesday night’s league match at home to Alvechurch (7:45 KO), manager Tim Flowers has looked at the league latest and our opponents. He starts with reflecting on Saturday’s solid draw…
We come into tomorrow’s game on the back of another away game – with our last home game versus Harborough being cancelled, we’ve only played two home games since I returned to the club, so we now find ourselves with a three match spell at home, in front of our own fans.
We seem to have been on the road forever and a lot of them recently have been longer ones – we’ve gone to Bury, Stamford and Leiston, whilst we still have Needham Market and St Ives to come. What we have done on the road in the last few weeks is show resilience; we’ve shown some backbone when we’ve been put under pressure, none more so than Leiston on Saturday where, for large parts of the game, we were on the back front and defending as a team.
We didn’t really offer much going forward, but did score the opening goal against the run of play. Leiston had the lion share of the opportunities, so credit has to go to us for how we worked out of possession defensively – the way we worked, blocked and committed.
Ellis in goals on debut put in a fantastic performance, making a number of saves – far too many for my liking. They were crucial for us, especially the one in the final minute, which was a terrific block.
Following the injury to Rory, I brought Ellis in. He comes from Blackburn, he drove down at silly o’clock on the morning and then had the massive coach trip we all had, so that was a fantastic effort and it was a match saving performance to a certain extent.
Six or seven weeks ago, I’m sure we’d have gotten beat, so to come out of it with something to show is great. We mustn’t forget that Leiston sat in eighth before play, three or four points outside the play-offs. They score heavily, so to get a return from the game was terrific.
We now have to back that up – we need to put some points on the board, as 31 clearly isn’t going to be anywhere near enough. I haven’t got a crystal ball, but I’m imagining mid-40s might possibly be the cut off, but there’ll be swings and roundabouts as we go.
Both teams tomorrow have got a big incentive to win the game – if Alvechurch win, they go above us, with a colossal amount of games in hand too, which they have in their back pocket on all the teams down there. From our point of view, we can stretch the gap between ourselves and the fourth bottom spot.
I want to see us improve as a team – we set out to win every game, but that’s obviously not possible. However, what we have shown is a fighting spirit and a resilience in the last few weeks; we’re on a three match unbeaten run so if you can keep building on that and build some momentum, it can go a long way to push us up and away from the bottom four. There’s plenty of teams in the mix that are all thinking the same way.
We’ve got 13 games left and I think the relegation battle will go down to the wire – what every team is trying to do is get some of that heat off and if you’re going into the final stretch still in it, it can have that psychological effect on you that makes you tense up or become frightened. So, can we build on this little unbeaten run we’re on and get some more momentum going? That’s the question.
I was at Alvechurch for a year before leaving and returning to Bromsgrove – the vast majority of their players were recruited in the summer and there are some fantastic players there. They were playing some fantastic football before Christmas – after 11 games, the team were in second place, having knocked a National League North team out of the FA Cup, whilst still being in the FA Trophy, and we looked an attractive team. The issue was that we lacked options up front a little bit – we had Jose Marquez on loan from Forest Green, who they took back after a month and it left us bare up front. In the last few weeks, they’ve brought in three or four up front, so all of a sudden there’s good options and they’ve got some really good footballers.
If we’re off it, and not getting to the ball quick enough or in people’s faces, it could be a long night for us, so we’ve got to make sure we’re all action and ready to get involved from the get go. I’ve got a lot of respect for all the lads at Alvechurch and I enjoyed my time there – I know Kyle (Storer) well, as he was my captain at Solihull Moors, and I was with joint manager with Yatesy (Mark Yates) at Solihull for a year. There’s a lot of good people at the club and I wish them nothing but the best – after tomorrow night that is!
