28-12-18 – Preview – Stockport County Vs Kidderminster Harriers

The Harriers have a tough task to face tomorrow when they travel to take on Stockport County. The task has been made so much tougher by that poor showing at Hereford on Boxing Day that ended with all three points for the hosts after Ryan Johnson gave away a pathetic penalty and we squandered chances galore. 

At the same time County were at home to their neighbours Altrincham and ran out worthy winners in a 2-0 victory with goals from James Stott and Frank Mulhern. That win sent them above us to fourth place in the table while our defeat caused us to drop down to seventh – ironically our lowest position since we beat Stockport 2-1 at home in August when we had moved up to ninth place from twelfth.

We’ll be travelling to Manchester without Billy Daniels after he was taken out of the Hereford game with a crunching assault that left him writhing on the pitch while the referee allowed Hereford to play on and almost score. He’ll now be out of the game for at least a month with a bad knee injury.

The game was symptomatic of recent games with us have the majority of the possession but failing to do anything with it. Ashley Chambers continues to be hesitant in front of goal even when given golden opportunities to score as he had twice at Hereford and Ed Williams looks to be a shadow of the player that had supposedly got the scouts flocking to our games. His goals have dried up since he scored four games in a row back in October. Since then not a sniff.

It’s not known what injuries County have. It’s not something they talk about except to say there are no former Harriers there and the closest we could come to is Jordan Keanes brother Cieron used to play for us.

Can we get a result there? At this moment in time, with the poor displays we’ve been seeing and a feeling of despondency among the fans, then I’d have to say no but you never know. If they had a kick up the arse following the Hereford game then we might, hopefully, see some kind of improvement. 

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Hall, Palmer, Phillips, Horsfall, O’Connor, Penn, Vaughan, Johnson, Wagner, Baxendale, Weeks, Stratford, Taylor-Randle, Austin, Bradley, Chambers, Richards, Williams, Waring.

Stockport County from:

Hinchcliffe, Ormson, Cowan, Downing, Duxbury, Keane, Minihan, Palmer, Robinson, Smalley, Stott, Dimaio, Etches, Stephenson, Kirby, Mantack, Osborne, Thomas, Turnbull, Walker, Bell, Mulhern, Warburton, Czubic.

Referee: Mr Richard Aspinall. Blackpool

Talk about the game here

Links to Stockport County websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here