'Appalling' Tudors make life too easy for Totton
It was an afternoon to forget for Hemel Town
An exasperated Lee Bircham said his Hemel Town side lacked leaders on the pitch as they slumped to a 3-1 home loss to Totton on Saturday.
With just one win in their last nine games in National League South, the Tudors’ second loss in a row came much through their own making, with mistakes offering up chances and indeed goals for Totton as they sunk to 16th in the table.
After a poor start, which saw the visitors take the lead after 12 minutes through Josh Sims, Hemel restored parity when Marshall Francis slotted home a penalty midway through the first-half. But a mistake at the back allowed Tony Lee to restore Totton’s lead barely two minutes after the equaliser, leaving Hemel to chase the game once more.
In a performance which disappointed Bircham and assistant David Noble, Hemel persevered but another error towards the end put Ollie Godziemski through to slot home Totton’s third to put the game to rest.
“I don’t want to go on and make excuses,” Bircham said afterwards. “We were appalling for spells in that game. We’ve lost our leaders, and this is when you need leaders. They’ll be back at some stage but we’re crying out for them. We’ve lost a balance.
“We all care, but we have to keep working because there is no magic spell to come and help us, no unicorn to put on a Hemel shirt and get us out of it.
“We didn’t do enough to score, we never do. For all the endeavour we have, the moments, we just don’t have a killer. It’s got to land on someone’s head or we’ve got to bundle it over the line.
“We’re struggling, we’re struggling to get results and the lads are feeling it. It’s tough. It was horrible today, we gave ourselves a mountain to climb and we didn’t do it. We’re just not doing enough to win games of football.
“We’re majorly disappointed. For the work we put in, we don’t deserve that outcome. If we could put our finger on it, we would do. We feel a bit let down, but we also got things wrong with the personnel. It’s difficult speaking after a defeat like that, with the manner of the goals we’ve conceded and the timing of the goals as well.
“We can’t go in and rip into them for making errors. The best teams make fewer errors, it’s as simple as that. But we make things really hard, we gift teams chances we just don’t get. You’ll hear every manager say the same when you’re in a bit of a rut. And we are in one.”