Gannon is left wanting more
COUNTY boss Jim Gannon was left “livid” with his side, despite watching The Hatters beat neighbours Curzon Ashton 3-1 on Saturday in the National League North. Gannon pointed to a ‘lack of a killer instinct’ and said his team “took their foot off the gas” after cruising into a 3-0 lead just after the interval.
Goals from Danny Lloyd had been capped with a second half Jimmy Ball finish, but the County chief lambasted his promotion challengers for missing out on what he described as a “four pointer”.
“I was livid,” Gannon explained. “We should have capitalised on the situation and won by more. That could have been a ‘four pointer’. We saw it when we beat Brackley 3-0, where we get the three points and we also boost the goal difference for ourselves in what is a tight promotion race.
“We’ve got players who want a rest when they’re winning games, and if you go back to teams under someone like Sir Alex Ferguson, they’re relentless right until the end. I’ll be really disappointed if we get to the end of the season and miss out because we haven’t won games by more goals when we should have done.”
Despite Ball’s early strike in the second half, County’s dominant performance eventually petered out before Curzon grabbed a late consolation from the penalty spot.
“We wanted to invite Curzon up the pitch – Leicester showed last season that possession isn’t key, it’s penetration. We wanted to drop off, let them into our half and then strike, but we’ve only done that once or twice after going 3-0 up. Even right at the death, Lewis Montrose has a chance to release Kaine Felix in on goal – he dawdles, and Curzon go and score. It’s infuriated me.”
The former Motherwell boss did admit that he can be “too harsh” on his players who “did provide a massive effort” in the comfortable victory – but that he was left wanting more from his side.
Gannon’s mood won’t have been helped by all of County’s promotion rivals also winning on Saturday.
“I’m not too frustrated by what other teams do,” Gannon said.
“We just have to look after ourselves, and we’ve come out of a game with three points and a ‘plus two’ goal difference – and we should have had more.
“The last fifteen minutes or so must be better, and I’m hoarse after every game now having to talk the lads through what their mentality should be.
“But we have given a massive effort in the game, and maybe that’s drained them – and that’s where I may be too harsh.
“It’s not to be disrespectful to Curzon, but if we were clinical and released our forward players more often, we’d have comfortably won by a lot more.
“Connor Hampson gave away a foul and a goal with the penalty, and it’s another goal in the ‘goals against’ column. If we finish on the same amount of points as the team in fifth, we’ll look back on goals like that and other points dropped and goals conceded which have cost us, and that’s what we want to improve on.”
Whilst the desire to keep improving was the main topic of discussion for Gannon, the 47-year-old Hatters chief did claim County are “ready for the challenge” of back-to-back trips to high fliers Salford City and AFC Fylde.
“We’re looking forward to both. They’re both different challenges – Salford know how to get up the pitch and threaten through set plays and a quite direct threat, and obviously Fylde play a more expansive game,” he said.
“It’s nice to be on the points tally that we are on already though – we do want to be in the play-offs, but it’s nice to see that we’re on a much higher tally than previous years, and we go into both of those games with confidence.
“We have a solid away form, and if we keep the ball and play our game like we know we can, we’ve got a chance in both of winning.
“We have a nice deep squad at the moment, and we’re going to need it as we put pressure on ourselves to get into the top five and to stay there.”