Canterbury City boss Ben Smith faces the most important week of his fledgling managerial career as he must now plot how his side can overcome a one goal deficit in the FA Vase semi final.
Canterbury returned home a goal behind courtesy of Ryan Flack’s eighth goal of the season and left the City boss in a bullish mood when he spoke to KSN after the game.
“They’re a good side so we couldn’t open up against them as they’ll have punished us – it’s about getting the balance right. If you look at the balance of play, we’re the ones who have had the clearer chances.”
“It’s disappointing to concede a goal like that as I think we got the tactics spot on today – we’re in the tie, we’re a goal down and in the last ten minutes we’ve had them on the ropes – three clear cut chances and we should have taken one of those chances at least!”
“Fair player to the keeper but being critical my players should have taken the chances – it’s one of those; well played keeper, but we’ve got to take those chances!”
“We’re disappointed in the way that the game ended with the chances, but we’ll have taken that before the game – we’d have taken that all day long! We’ll take them back to our place now, we’re in the tie and we’ll have a good crowd there and we’ll have a right good go!”
“The biggest disappointment for the whole competition was that we drew Cray Valley and have to come here to play a Vase Semi Final on that, but it can’t help them either as they play on it on a regular basis – and they’ve got some great ball players as well.”
“We had great support today – there have people who slag off our support on forums – we had a lot of people here today who are passionate for the club with their maroon scarves on and it’s great to see. Hopefully off the back of this, we’ll see it on a regular basis as the City has a club to be proud of!”
“Everything we hoped would happen today did expect for us putting the ball in the net. Other than that, what chances did their key players have today? They looked pretty in the middle of the park but what do they have? Not a lot. Disappointed in the way it finished but we’ve preformed today which gives us confidence going into the next leg next week.”
“If you’d have said that we’d go one-nil down and get them back to Salters Lane… They beat Sheppey 5-0 last weekend – these are a quality side. I think that they’re one of the best SCEFL sides I’ve seen in three years! Again, there is no pressure on us at all next week – absolutely zero!”
“We’ll start next week as we finished today – banging the door down – we haven’t got ten minutes to break the door down, we’ve got ninety! We might get caught on the break, but we’ll throw everything at it.”
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Kevin (Cray Valley boss Watson), but I think a lot of their people thought they would go through quite comfortably and at the minute they’re not going through comfortably – they’re rocking!”
“Our first target was to stay in the tie – as I’ve said to KSN before, not once have we talked about getting to Wembley, we’ve been talking about how this will benefit our football club!”