Report by Julian Tyley
Whitley suffered a narrow 3-2 defeat at play-off rivals Boro Rangers on Saturday but Bay manager Jay Bates was well aware that it was going to be a difficult game, highlighting that his players sometimes need to find ways of ‘winning ugly’.
“You always know when you come to Boro Rangers you’ll be in for a battle. They’re a very physical team and you could see in the first ten minutes it was always going to be about the refereeing of a physical game. Then we make a mistake and give them an early goal but after that I thought we had a good passage of play and equalised. It was a bit of a deflection, but before that there was a good little bit of play so we deserved the goal.
“We went in at half time 1-1 and we thought we’d come out second half and be alright. We got an early goal from Callum to go 2-1 up. Yes it was a good goal, he’s done a few free kicks like that. I think the keeper told them (his defenders) to jump so he’s put it low and it’s gone in the back of the net.
“But then we started to sit off them and they got a lot of balls crossed into the box and we found ourselves 3-2 down.
“We’ve got to get better at finding ways to win ugly like they do. It’s very typical of them. That’s the way they play. When we played them at our place we found ourselves 3-0 down, three set pieces and got beat 3-2 in a very physical game when we scored two late on.
“If we’re going to meet them in the play offs we’re going to have to learn how to beat them and be more physical and play their game, not just play to our strengths.
“We changed the formation a little bit from Wednesday (at Horden). It got tweaked to a 4-4-2, the pitch was quite narrow. I thought we were going to be hard to beat and we’d try and nick one or two goals. I didn’t think it was going to be a 3-2 game.”
Nathan Nkunku had a great game on Wednesday but as Jay acknowledged, “He was quiet. He worked hard but both strikers were very quiet. Every time we got the ball they were around us, very aggressive in the tackles. They harassed us, they worked very hard and it didn’t give us the time and space we wanted today, so we needed to adapt our game to their game.”
With play-off rivals Kendal and West Auckland both dropping points, Whitley remain strongly in contention but Jay was quick to point out that there are no easy games. “Any game in the Northern League’s a hard game. You look at North Shields they’ve been sneaking up but lost today, and West Auckland, they got beat as well. They’ve had a good little run. Kendal are on a little sticky patch, but you can see the teams around the bottom are getting better so every game’s going to be a tough game and we’ll just have to adapt ourselves and have a big push for the last ten games.
Looking ahead to Tuesday night’s opponents Crook Town, Jay explained “Crook have recruited well, they’ve got a new manager so have Northallerton and Whickham, so all the teams around the bottom are getting better. There’s no gimmies in this League. Birtley are doing well, they’ve beaten Guisborough not long ago. There are plenty of teams coming into it. Yes, every game’s a tough game.”
