16-08-19 – Preview – Curzon Ashton Vs Kidderminster Harriers

The Harriers are facing a tough looking game tomorrow when we make a, now rare, trip into Manchester to play Curzon Ashton. In previous seasons we’ve had to go there up to six times to play Stockport County, Salford City, FC Utd of Manchester, Ashton Utd, Altrincham and Curzon themselves. Now we have just the last two as the rest have dispersed themselves elsewhere.

Curzon are flying high near the top of the table as one of the three unbeaten sides so far. Draws away at Southport and Leamington have been boosted by both home games won against Bradford (PA) and Darlington with the opening day game against Bradford being particularly memorable for the 5-0 scoreline inflicted on them.

We won at Bradford last weekend but only by 3-0 and then promptly threw all the good work away with a home defeat to Gloucester City in midweek. We had gone into, what we thought, would have been an unassailable 2-0 lead through two fine strikes from Ashley Chambers and Declan Weeks but then collapsed as a part time City staged a comeback in two minutes then wrapped up the game with a dubious second half penalty. A penalty of our own soon after was wasted when Chambers missed out on the chance of a brace and a point for us.

We should be able to take a more or less fit eleven to Manchester but a very weak bench that might include Tom Palmer and James O’Connor if they’re deemed fit to play. That weak bench is becoming our Achilles heel as pointed out by the manager John Pemberton following the City defeat.

The players attitudes have been good. I’ve got a very small squad and I can’t quite add to it at the moment for whatever reason so I’ve got eleven bodies of which two are our loan signings. Take them two out I’ve got nine bodies so I’m asking these players to go again, and again and again and to be fair to them they are.

So the big positive is they roll their sleeves up, they’re up for the battle, they know what we are, they know what we’ve got and they’re getting on with it as we all are and that’s a big positive for me. They can go and turn a performance like that, yes we got beat but we’ve dominated the match. I can’t make the substitutions at the moment and I’ve got young kids on the bench so it’s frustrating. 

We were finally told yesterday, in a statement issued by the club [fac_icon icon=”external-link”], that there’s a possible takeover in place and that all financial transactions have been put on hold but that doesn’t explain why we can’t loan players in that have their wages paid for by their parent club. Is there more to it than meets the eye?

So we go into yet another game with a wafer thin squad and an admission from the manager that he’s struggling to make any changes to a team that might want to perform but are technically not capable of doing so. Is it a game that we could win?

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Gregory, Palmer, Davidson, O’Connor, Higginson, Penn, Johnson, Moyo, R Williams, Prosser, Weeks, Stratford, Taylor-Randle, Scott, Butterfield, Austin, Chambers, E Williams, White, Peniket.

Curzon Ashton from:

Mason, McCoy Baillie, O’Leary, Regan, Shaw, Samassa, Thornley, Askew, Ali, Bannister, Cooke, Davies, Evans, Halls, Khoury, Merrill, Miller, Sinclair, Wall, Wroe, Elstone, Saunders. 

Referee: Mr Paul Brown. Newcastle upon Tyne

Talk about the game here

Links to Curzon Ashton websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here