Rangers made to work for victory as Heathens lose

Flackwell Heath fell to their first defeat of Chris Ayres’ reign on Tuesday night, a 1-0 loss to Risborough Rangers in the Spartan South Midlands Premier Division.

Sean Coles scored the only goal of this fixture to extend Rangers’ unbeaten streak to 12 matches, while the Heathens failed to ‘nick’ a third consecutive victory and slip to 14th as a result.

That’s a ‘false position’, according to boss Ayres, who is hoping to build another run of positive results starting with lowly-placed Dunstable Town this weekend.

Speaking on the Rangers defeat, Ayres said: “We knew what we were up against. They’ve got a big budget, and they’ve got some players that have played at a higher level before.

“They are very good at pinning you back, so we had to dig in. We’ve conceded a sloppy goal – we’ve let them get into our box and their big centreforward rolled our centre-half and put the ball in the corner.

“In the second half, we showed some good resilience, and gave a good account of ourselves. We restricted them to three or four chances in the whole game, we just couldn’t make ours count.

“To be honest, I thought we deserved something. I think you could see the relief from them in the end. With the way they celebrated, they knew they’d – not got away with it – but they knew they had a game.

“It was a shame we couldn’t keep our unbeaten run going by just nicking a goal.”

Earlier this month, assistant manager Paul Shone revealed the Heathens’ squad is lacking depth and that statement was echoed when Ayres spoke to the Advertiser this week.

The manager told the newspaper that long-serving player Mo Ceesay has departed the club following Marcus Richardson’s exit.

“Mo has been a massive part of the team for years, and when you lose one of your centre-halves, it’s gutting,” he said.

“We’ve got one or two we are looking to bring in over the next week to sort that position out because we are a bit light defensively at the minute. If we lose Jamie Essex now, we could be in real trouble.

“So, we just need to strengthen some areas.”

Ayres added: “This weekend, we're at home to Dunstable.

“I don't think their results have been too great and they are near the bottom of the table.

“It’s our first game back at home for me, Paul, and Keith (Ryan) so we are hoping to get a win.

“The aim right now is to try and get up the league as quick as we can and get the consistency, that the team had a couple of years ago, back.”