07-03-23. Match report Vs Chester FC

No goals again. NKP sent off again

Report: Phil Lench

The Harriers in-ability to score goals continued once again at Chester FC this evening and we also saw a second red card for Nathaniel Knight-Percival within a matter of weeks to add to our misery. We’ve now played five games since our last league goal at home to Brackley Town and we lost that game too.

In yet another effort to sort the problem out the Harriers manager, Russ Penn, dropped Amari Morgan-Smith to the bench and bought back Ethan Freemantle into the starting line up but it didn’t make one iota of a difference because it’s still the old job of re-arranging the chairs on the sinking Titanic as we begin our drop down the table. Until we bring in a recognised striker no longer in nappies then it’s never going to change.

As said in came Freemantle along with Knight-Percival after he missed last Saturdays game against Boston Utd due to a one match ban for his red card at Chorley FC. Also getting a start was Tom Owen-Evans meaning that Jack Bearne went to the bench to make way for him while Krystian Pearce was out ‘injured’ following his strange substitution at the weekend.

For Chester the much missed Declan Weeks started to rub in just what we are missing in our team. A creative midfielder that would fight for the cause.

The first chance of the game came when a long ball over the top was chased after by Charlie Caton but he crashed into Tom Palmer when quickly came out to collect and deny the home side an early goal. The ball rolled out for a throw in.

Weeks tried his luck from outside the area but Palmer was equal to it and the ball was played out for a corner. Soon after came our first chance of the game when Freemantle found himself in space but his shot, also from outside the area, was over Harry Tyrers crossbar.

Iwan Murray tried his luck with a shot that Palmer collected easily while TOE headed over from an Ashley Hemmings corner. That was it for the first half and it was all very run of the mill really.

HT: 0 – 0

The second half got underway with an enforced change for us as Reiss McNally came on for Alex Penny. It’s not known yet if it was precautionary or if Alex has had yet another knee injury. Someone might tell us by the weekend. Within minutes it continued to go all wrong for us.

First, three minutes following the restart, Adam Thomas saw his shot go wide before five minutes later making no mistake with his second effort. Tom Palmer punched a routine ball away, again, and there was Declan Weeks waiting to play the ball back into the area for Thomas to run onto and curl the ball beyond the Harriers keeper and into the net.

Two minutes later and it went even wronger. A corner was headed away at by Matt Williams and sent up field. For some unknown reason the referee Richard Holmes attention was called and he walked back towards Knight-Percival showing him a straight red card. It seemed to have been some kind of incident involving NKP and the keeper Tyrer and hopefully someone might tell us by the weekend.

As is sometimes the case with this kind of thing it spurs the depleted team into trying to make up for it and we had our best spell of the game. Caleb Richards, having a quiet game, crossed in for Kai Lissimore to fire goalwards but the ball took a deflection and was cleared away. Richards again put a cross in for Hemmings to connect with and his header forced Tyrer into a smart stop to push the ball away into the path of Lissimore and again his shot was cleared off the line.

Once that twenty minute spell of being on top was over Penn began to make more changes. Off went Owen-Evans and Freemantle to be replaced by Jack Bearne and Morgan-Smith. They tried but were getting nowhere before Chester finally put the game to bed.

The dangerous Caton had already given us another warning when his shot was pushed away from Palmer but when Weeks played a through ball to him he showed calm and quality to poke the ball under the Harriers keeper for the winning goal.

Yet another poor result for us sees a drop down to twelfth place and with other teams below us having games in hand, and winning games, then it looks like we could drop even further if we don’t pull our finger out. Even more so considering who we’re playing this Saturday!    

FT: 2 – 0

Goals for Chester FC: Thomas 51, Caton 88

Talk about the game here

Latest table and stats here

Chester FC	Goals	Subs	Time	Cards
Tyrer
Roberts
Williams
Weeks
Burke
Coates
Murray			84
Heywood
Willoughby
Caton
Thomas			68
Subs:
A Brown
Stephenson
Dudley			68
Earl			84
Hughes
Harriers	Goals	Subs	Time	Cards
Palmer
Foulkes
Richards
Knight-Percival
Morrison
Penny			46
Owen-Evans			76
Lissimore
Freemantle			76
Hemmings
Byrne
Subs:
Morgan-Smith			76
Z Brown
Martin
Bearne			76
McNally			46
Referee:
Mr Richard Holmes
Preston