The latest column for Altrincham Today from manager Matt Doughty.
TLast Saturday’s scoreless draw against Harrogate wasn’t a great game for the fans to watch but I was pleased with the way my players responded to the disappointment of the 2-1 defeat at Hyde United in the Cheshire Senior Cup on Valentine’s Day.
We are obviously short in terms of attacking options at the moment and that showed as we didn’t really create very much against Simon Weaver’s team, but defensively we did really well and the players deserved the clean sheet and our first home league point since early September, when we drew 2-2 with Chorley.
Highlights of the goalless draw against Harrogate:
We are 20 points adrift of staying in this league with just 13 games to play. Whilst the situation seems hopeless, we have to keep going whilst it is technically possible to survive and something will have to give today as our opponents, Worcester City, haven’t won since November and our single league victory was as long ago as early October… a draw is not of much value to either side, so both teams should be going all out for that elusive victory.
Micah Evans, who I thought did well for us against Harrogate, will get a chance to come up against his former team-mates, just two weeks after leaving Worcester to join us.
On the injury front, Tom Hannigan has a 60% chance of playing, whilst Andy Owens is unlikely to be fit enough to start, but might be able to take a place on the subs bench.
Sean Miller and Craig Hobson are still a few weeks away from being fit for selection, whilst I need to be very careful about considering Shaun Densmore again during this campaign as his progress in building up the muscle round his knee is very slow, therefore it might be next season before Shaun plays football again.
Worcester City are now in the relegation zone along with Stalybridge and ourselves and they seem to have been hit by financial issues, which meant that all of their players were made available a couple of weeks ago. Today’s game is a big opportunity for us to gain our first home league win of the season… let’s hope that we grab it!
Pictures: Michael Ripley
