Hinckley AFC manager Carl Abbott lamented his side’s performance that saw their five match winning streak come to an end yesterday.
AFC had won all their games in February and won all four previous matches against Leicester Road until yesterday’s narrow loss.
Hinckley were lacking their usual creative spark in the game despite plenty of possession and Abbott admitted his side were far from their best. He said: “I’m really disappointed.
“I won’t say let down because these lads have pulled it out of the bag for me for months and months, and some over a couple of seasons.
“But I’m disappointed because I don’t think we played with any personality or identity. I thought we lost our style and our template for playing the game. We just got involved in a bit of a scrap really.”
The former Wolves Casuals boss said defensive errors cost his team at least one point from the game, and said such mistakes at the back have got to stop.
“I wasn’t particularly impressed with them (Leicester Road). They’ve only really seen our goal face three times. I take my hat off to Ryan Paddock and accept that they probably should have scored another one in the first half where Pads has made two amazing blocks.
“But the first goal was a joke. That can’t keep happening. You look back to the Bromsgrove game where we threw one in early and that set the tone, it happened again today. That’s a bad goal to concede. It’s rubbish.
“The second one isn’t great from our point of view either. It came from our attacking phase and they broke on us. They were into our back four within a few seconds.
“It’s something we keep looking at and keep talking about but it still happens.I’m so disappointed with the goals we conceded.
“But still we get our goal, then Sam hits the crossbar and he should score, he knows that, and then we have the one that I’m led to believe is two feet over the line. What can you do about that?
“But we’ve had our day four times and I can take this one on the chin and move on to Thursday.”
Abbo felt his side couldn’t create too many clear cut chances because they were too narrow, and as a result were cramped for space.
“I don’t think we introduced our width early enough. In our diamond system we look to move the ball, keep it and come out on one of the sides. But we struggled to come out into the space and penetrate down the sides like we normally do.
“Then it becomes a little bit narrow and lads are looking for options in the middle which aren’t there.
“But I just don’t think we played with any real personality. We’re full of personality as a side, everyone knows how we play and it’s really identifiable but I don’t think we carried those traits today.”
