WE may have a different management team in place but some things never seem to change. We still don’t do cup ties, albeit we had a difficult draw, and we still can’t defend for love nor money. While we have managed to find ourselves a much-needed goal source in Reece Styche, the new striker could be Messi or Ronaldo and he still wouldn’t score enough goals to deal with the deficiencies behind him.

With the game being rearranged for a Friday night, my pre-game routine was all to pot meaning I found myself in place in the Tin Shed a good 30 minutes before kick-off. The ground was pretty empty at that point and it wasn’t much fuller 15 minutes later. Fortunately, just before kick-off, Darlo fans came out of the woodwork to generate a pretty respectable crowd on a cold night where FA Trophy elimination looked a pretty decent bet. As it was, we were reasonably decent in the first half. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t pull up any trees, but such are our woes in the league, the first half performance was solid enough to sucker me in to thinking we could pull off a shock. We battled in midfield and our defence held up firm against our full-time opposition. While we didn’t really get numbers in and around Reece Styche during the first 45, I could tolerate that for a bit of defensive security.

It would get better in the second half. Greg Mills wiped out, a clear penalty and Styche calmly slotted home. Could we actually do this? Of course not. The class of 2017-18, much like the previous year’s, has one of the most effective self-destruct functions in football. A rash challenge from the keeper here, some poor marking from defenders there and a lead quickly turns in to a deficit. So poor has our defending been since we stepped up to the National League North that nothing really surprises me these days. One thing that has changed is the striker. For all of the endeavour of Nathan Cartman up front on his own, our equalising goal simply wouldn’t have been scored prior to the signing of Styche. We saw some pace, strength and a physical challenge that their goalkeeper just didn’t fancy. It’s only one game and to be fair, the ex-Tamworth striker had a quiet night otherwise but if his second goal is what we can expect on a weekly basis, he could well become the cult hero Tommy Wright expects.

Like in recent games, what positives there were on display were overridden by the glaringly obvious deficiencies that come out for all to see on a weekly basis. I’ve seen a few comments this season from fans wondering how we could drop off so much from last season despite most of the players being the same. The simple answer to this is the signs were there last season. Remarkably, we’re actually conceding fewer goals this season (1.45 goals per game) compared to last season (1.59). The key difference was last season we scored goals for fun whereas this season they’ve been much harder to come by. This last summer was the time for our previous manager to make the big step changes in personnel to resolve the issue but for whatever reason he opted not to. Now, Wright and Alan White have been left to sort the problem out with underperforming players sitting on well paid, long-term contracts. The new management duo certainly talk a good game and sound like they know where the problems are; hopefully, they’ll get the time and patience from the fans to sort this mess out.