Hopes of escaping relegation from the Vanarama National League South took a huge blow for Welling United when they slumped to defeat at Chesham United. After the match, Welling’s caretaker manager Brian Statham shared his views.

He said: “The first half. I thought there wasn’t much in it really between both teams.” he said “Then a few injuries, we lose Dave (Winfield) and the sending off and we didn’t really create a great deal.

“We pulled the goal back and we’re back in the game only to be undone by a really, really good finish. We’ve not scored a goal like that this season. We’ve conceded a fair few from decent strikes and there was another one today.”

Although Winfield had already gone off injured, Statham was expecting to get something out of the game. That changed when Gene Kennedy was dismissed.

“When you get the equaliser you feel like you’ve got a bit of momentum only to be undone by the red card.” Statham said.

“It was foul and abusive (language). Gene’s aware of that. He can’t afford to do that regardless of how frustrated you might be.”

Statham continued “We’ll have to regroup and get over that pretty quickly because that’s going to hurt everybody. I think there was a fair few people expecting us to get a result today, and rightly so after the performance last week, but that wasn’t to be. We’ll just need to go again until such time that it becomes mathematically impossible.”

Kennedy’s dismissal means that a key player will miss three matches suspended. Statham said “He can join in and get further up the pitch and score goals like he did last Saturday. It does mean that we’re going to have to have a rethink but there’s enough quality. We didn’t see enough of that today, but there is enough quality. I’m convinced of it, but time and time again we’ve come up short.”

Lack of creativity meant that Welling had very few chances. “When you play with three, and one centre forward straight down the middle you’re expecting your wide centre forwards to get on the ball a lot.” he said

“It proved a little bit challenging for them to get on the ball comfortably today, maybe a lot of that was down to the pitch, maybe down to how they (Chesham) played, they were really effective in doing what they did, not particularly pretty, but it was effective.”

Four-one looked like a thrashing but two goals were scored in stoppage game as Welling chased the game. “One-nil, four-one, you’re going away with zero points.” admitted Statham.

“Four-one is tough to take but we were trying to get back into the game with a man down and as opposed to being cautious you want to throw a bit of caution to the wind and try and get back into the game and try and nick a point.”

Images courtesy of Dave Budden