Massey refuses to point fingers after poor display
Maidenhead United skipper Alan Massey says the squad must take collective responsibility for Saturday’s underwhelming display against Gateshead.
Off the back of their 1-0 win over Woking the previous week, Maidenhead had expected to do much better against Mike Williamson’s inconsistent Gateshead side.
They began reasonably brightly, with Koby Arthur and Reece Smith passing up very presentable chances in the first half.
However, they switched off defensively in the first half, allowing Paul Blackett to cut the ball back for Dan Ward to sweep home the only goal of the game, and then struggled to break down their resilient visitors after that.
It would be easy for the players to point fingers at the forward players for a lack of cutting edge on Saturday – and throughout the season – however, Massey said the Magpies must improve in both boxes if they’re to drag themselves away from the bottom reaches of the National League table.
United failed to score for a sixth time in 10 matches this season, and manager Alan Devonshire admitted afterwards they’d lacked intensity. On too many occasions their final ball went astray or was cut out and cleared by the Gateshead defence.
It’s clear the forward line isn’t yet gelling in the way Devonshire would have hoped but Massey said the whole of the squad must take collective responsibility for the defeat.
Speaking afterwards he said: “Yeah, disappointing, after last week – we needed to push on and we weren’t where we needed to be today, and we were on TV as well.
“We’ve got to pick ourselves up and go again now. I can't say if they were offside [for Gateshead’s goal], I’d have to look back at it, but we must deal better with that situation.
“That was their only real chance in the first half but we got into good areas and maybe didn’t have that final pass. But we’ve got to be ruthless at both ends of the pitch.
“I think we came back from their goal and got back on top but we couldn’t find that goal, which would maybe have helped us push on again. We got into some good areas but that final cross or final pass wasn’t quite there. We’ll keep working on it and we’ll go again next week.
“I think we’ve got to look at both ends of the pitch. We’ve got to stop letting soft goals in as well and be more clinical at the other end of the pitch.
“It’s a collective effort, it’s not pointing fingers anywhere, we’re all in this together and we’ll pick ourselves up and go again.”
Devonshire did make attacking changes on Saturday in a bid to jolt his team back into life. Shawn McCoulsky and Adrian Clifton came on to replace Arthur and Emile Acquah but the same problems persisted. McCoulsky was probably the liveliest of Maidenhead’s strikers but he passed up their best chance to get on level terms when he fired over the bar in the 86th minute after rolling his man well in the box.
Maidenhead currently sit 18th, and outside of the bottom four – however, they’re also just two points ahead of bottom club Torquay United.
Their record of seven goals from 10 games is also the joint second worst in the division, with only Torquay managing fewer in the league this season.