Paul Carden upbeat despite AFC Telford United defeat

“I’m gutted about the result, but not about the performance, when we’ve gone toe-to-toe with them and pushed them until the end, to the point that they’ve put another centre-half on the pitch and they’re defending the game out, so we’ve got to take the positives from it.”

Harriers sit third in the Vanarama National League North table and came within a hairs breadth of knocking West Ham United out of the Emirates FA Cup last weekend; they also defeated the Bucks comfortably in a 3-0 victory in the reverse fixture in November, but were made to work much harder for this victory, secured with a Nathan Cameron goal shortly before the interval:

“We can’t be despondent. Although the performance wasn’t free-flowing in any way, we’ve limited them, certainly in the first half, to set-pieces. The conditions were difficult, but we’ve handled it.”

“It’s an unfortunate error for the goal, just before half-time, which kind of changes your thoughts or your mindset a little bit. I felt in the second half we had to attack, we had to go at them, we had to close them down higher up the pitch. We weren’t overly creative; we’ve pressurised them, winning the ball higher up the pitch, and with better decision-making we can do more with the result of winning the ball where we did, but it was a battling performance. I said to the lads that if that’s the benchmark, then it’s fine margins and we need to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Carden included his two new signings, Lamine Sherif and Byron Moore, although both began on the substitutes bench. Moore was introduced for the final 30 minutes, and Carden expanded on his decision to add both to his squad:

“People might say “you’ve brought a midfielder in, and you’ve got midfielders”, but you’ve got to weigh up that we’ve got Liam (Nolan), who can’t play against his parent club (AFC Fylde), Keaton Ward’s loan is up shortly and we don’t know what’s going to be the outcome of that just yet, so whilst we have got midfielders, there’s potentially two out of next weekend’s game.”

“Lamine is a really good player, a really good pedigree. He was at Leicester, went to Accrington, where he was unfortunate with an injury. I spoke to John Coleman (Accrington manager), who was really complimentary about him, and he’s just going to give us that busy-ness in midfield. He wants to get on the ball, make things happen.”

“Byron is just a real quality acquisition. He’ll give us pace, he’ll give us a goal threat, he’ll give us versatility in attacking positions and he can play as either wing-back. He’s played a lot of football in higher divisions, and he’s local, but the main thing is that both of them are our own players now, and they’re not loans, and we need that.”