It was a tough afternoon for Tonbridge Angels as they went down to the only goal at Welling United leaving Steve McKimm frustrated.

They had plenty of opportunities, even before Welling went ahead but a mixture of missed chances, poor decisions, and good goalkeeping by Jack Sims meant that they failed to score.

After the game, Tonbridge manager Steve McKimm said: “We haven’t scored in four games, not for the lack of trying, not for the lack of desire, all the cliches you want. It’s not going in the back of the net. We need it to go in off a toe-nail, a kneecap, an earlobe then maybe we can get the ball rolling but very frustrating today. I thought we did really well, but doing well and losing one-nil doesn’t cut the mustard for me.”

He continued “It’s difficult to take. The players are hurting. That game there today should have been out of sight before they scored. You get a goal in this league, not just this game, and you’ve got something to hold onto. What we’ve done when we have won, which hasn’t been often, is gone ahead and pushed forward for another one. At the moment, every time we get sucker punched, they could have had another two in that ten or fifteen minute spell when we lost all of our shape, all of our organisation.” 

Once they had settled, they again enjoyed most of the territorial advantage. McKimm said “In the second half, they haven’t laid a glove on us. We’ve let them go through in the last couple of minutes, first five minutes they went through one on one, but it’s been played in their half. We’ve had to make them defend. We need goals from all over the park. We need them from forwards, we need them from set pieces, we need them from open play from midfielders from wide players, but at the moment it’s not happening for us.

“If we were not creating chances, I’d be a worried manager. My job will now be, when they are available, get someone who is going to put these chances away. At the moment, I’m not worried because we are creating chances.”

Although Tonbridge have players injured or carrying knocks, McKimm did not want to make excuses. “In terms of walking wounded, we’ve got another couple in their tonight but I don’t blame that, I can’t blame that.” he said “We’ve got a squad and our squad plays. The team plays and the subs come on and play and that’s what we’ve got. There’s no reason to moan about it. If someone gets injured someone else comes in and plays and that’s how it works.”

Next Saturday, Tonbridge have a big match at home to Chelmsford City, who are one place below them, and it presents a great opportunity for them to bounce back.

Pictures supplied by Dave Budden.