Goalscorer is top of Liam’s wanted list
LIAM Watson will make a goalscorer his number one recruitment priority this summer after the Sandgrounders fading play-off hopes were put to rest.
Watson’s men followed up Saturday’s 3-0 loss at Gateshead with a 1-1 draw at home against Telford on Bank Holiday Monday.
It was their 11th home draw of the season and brought the curtain down on the club’s home campaign.
Having lost frontman Marcus Carver to Football League side Hartlepool in January, the goalscoring burden fell on Jordan Archer, George Newll and Connor Woods. However, injuries took their toll and goals became hard to come by during the runin.
“Goalscorers, it’s what they do. In tight games, when you go on and win stuff you have that one person who’s done nothing all day and he’ll knock it in,” said Watson.
“We’ve been blessed over the years with really good goalscorers. Terry Fearns probably won us th eleague on his own in terms of being a goalscorer – there’s been lot of good goalscorers. Don’t undermine Jordan Archer, he’s scored twenty goals this season and I think he’d have scored a lot more if he’d stayed alongside Marcus (Carver) but that hasn’t been the case.
“Marcus going into the Football League probably had an affect but you’d have thought George would step up, Connor would step up but unfortunately injuries have dictated that and it hasn’t been the case.
“We lost three senior players – Russ (Benjamin), Chris (Doyle) and Marcus – Chris got injured, Marcus sold and Russ has been out since the second game of the season. That’s probably where the season evaporated.
“Lots of people have been watching games and teams at all levels are screaming out for goalscorers. If you look a level below, normally you’ve got someone hitting 30 goals, but they’re not there. But we have to find something.”
Jack Bainbridge headed against the post early on and Southport took the lead in the minute when a trademark long throw from Doug Tharme was headed in to his own goal by Reiss McNally.
It didn’t take long for the visitors to equalise when an uncharacteristic mistake by Supporters Player Of The Year Cam Mason allowed Robbie Evans to fire home.
The second half saw four clear cut chances for the Shropshire side while Niall Watson and Bainbridge could easily have given the home support the win they were hoping for in the final home game.
“If we’d have nicked it at the end it wouldn’t have been a fair result. We started off nice and bright and looked totally in control and then it was the curse giving Cam (Mason) the Player of the Year! He makes a mistake for their goal, that shouldn’t go in and then, apart from that, they had chances but none hit the target. Everything went wide and the game became flat - the players looked tired.
“It looks like the season has gone on too far. George was injured so he was kept back from Saturday, came on for ten minutes and got a knock. A lot of them have fallen away in the back end of the season.”
The occasion marked Watson’s 600th game in charge of the club.
“You have your ups and downs, that’s football management,” he said. “People want to pat you on the back, people want to criticise you, but in all the time I have been here at Southport I’ve brought in nearly one million pounds in transfer sales, three promotions, two championships, seven trophies on top of that. It’s not a bad record.
“The one thing
I’ve always done is make the right decision for the football club, not always me when it comes to moving players or selling players – you have to put the club first. That’s always been an element of frustration bvecause we’ve had spells where we could have probably kicked the club on in years gone by. That never happened but the club is on an even keel. We need people behind us, we need the support which we’re getting all the time and we need the sponsors to keep helping as much as they can.
“We need the players to grow – our average age, 22, is probably too young but maybe 23, 24 is about right. But we need a goalscorer.”