Jim set to ship out passengers
COUNTY boss Jim Gannon rounded on “certain members” of his playing squad as “passengers who are being carried”, as County succumbed to a fourth defeat in five on the road so far this season.
And the Hatters chief said some players had been starting games purely because others had been unavailable – and threatened to oust them from the club.
“There are certain players who are starting games by default, because of injuries or because there’s nobody challenging them in their position,” Gannon said.
“But with players returning from injuries, and with potential new signings, they’ll find that they will be out – and not just out of the side, but potentially out of the club.”
Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at York City means County have already lost more away games than they did in the 2016/17 season.
And Gannon pulled no punches in a frank assess- ment of his squad, admitting early season victories had “hidden certain flaws.”
The Hatters failed to follow up on last Tuesday’s 6-0 win over Southport, despite Gannon deploying the same line-up and formation as the Edgeley Park rout four days prior to the trip to York.
“The 6-0 win on Tuesday hid a lot of flaws in certain players, but the whole energy of the team on Tuesday carried some passengers through the game against Southport – but you could see against York that we’ve been carrying too many players through large spells of games,” Gannon said.
“We’ve got certain players with no tactical leadership or the ability to instruct and lead their team-mates on the pitch. We kept deenergising ourselves through our own poor crosses or poor decisions.
“I do think to myself and have to say to certain players, let’s stop playing it around, playing nice passes and thinking we’re good players – you can do that when you’re 4-0 up, but when you’re 2-0 down you need to get it to your front men, work hard, and create some pressure. We did that in the second half, and we then created some pressure and some chances.
“There was some poor technique, some of the lads were off the pace in terms of mental and physical sharpness, and once they got the goal we didn’t respond to that. I couldn’t wait for half-time to try and rejig things and give us some energy – unfortunately we needed a goal to give us some energy, and that never came.”
As well as combatting County’s “completely average” start to their fifth season in the sixth tier of English football, Gannon’s woes were compounded at York by injuries to two of his mainstays in the County side.
But, while Gannon admitted that the dislocation of Michael Clarke’s kneecap was “an unavoidable incident” as the County defender unsuccessfully battled to prevent York’s second goal of the afternoon, the former Port Vale boss did express his frustration with wingback Sam Minihan.
Minihan was brought off late on in the Southport victory to allow a tight groin to heal up, but the former Worcester man started in the defeat at York before being substituted after twenty minutes due to the same injury.
“This is where I need players to be more straight with me on how they’re feeling. We’ve found that the effects of his injury are holding him back – he’s not had the turbo charge he usually has, he’s not had the power to clear balls out of defence or put crosses into the box,” Gannon said.
“I was really disappointed with myself (after York), because it’s so difficult to change a winning side, and I probably would have been criticised if I’d done so and we lost. But Dan Cowan has come on for Sam, it’s a wasted substitution for us and we actually found that Dan did very well, and I should have been bold enough to make that call before the game.”