Match preview - Hereford FC vs Chester

The holiday fun continues tomorrow, with Chester FC the next lambs to the Edgar Street win-cycle slaughterhouse, kick off 3pm.

I'm joking of course, because I'm not sure how that happened on Boxing Day, but a win's a win I suppose. Kidderminster played all the football, Hereford had one tactic, which was the 'out' ball to Mike Symons, and fortunately the Kiddy lad at the back, in having one thing to do all afternoon by keeping Symo under control, had an utter aberration in giving the ref a decision to make in the penalty area as one of many hopeful innocuous balls was wafted in.

The match generally looked like a cup tie, with the Bulls pluckily being a bit rubbish and route-one against illustrious passing-team visitors from a division way above us. But with respect to Kiddy (and respect to that club is uniquely due from us I'd have thought after how they helped out above and beyond the call of duty when times were hard), our visitors were Kiddy, a club from our division, not Liverpool. We were so beneath being second best at times we looked third in a two-horse race. 

Marc Richards seemed to suggest post-match that he needed to get stuck into the players a bit more to get his tactical masterpiece perfected. He was, after all, sold to the board as a bit of a footballing brainbox. Well, I'm nothing like a footballing brainbox, but it was pretty obvious that Harriers' constant two-on-one luxurious situation on the left in the first half because George Lloyd wasn't tracking back could easily have resulted in a 0-3 scoreline at half-time.

I'm not remotely blaming the Cheltenham tyro, he's nominally a striker, so tracking back as cover for a right back shouldn't be in his DNA, but a better team than Kiddy (and blimey we did our best to make them look really good) would have put the game to bed from the left wing after 30 minutes. The overload was allowed to continue for the entirety of the first half. OK, as a coach you can set up wrongly to start with, but to either fail to see what the punters palpably could, or to see it and hope for the best rather than change it, isn't good enough, to my mind.  

And talking of tactical brainboxery...the momentum on Boxing Day behind every Bulls attack that ended with a throw-in for the home side was utterly lost, as everyone had to wait for 30 seconds while Jordan Cullinane-Liburd lumbered up, wiped the ball, and hurled it towards Symo in the box. If this is progressive coaching I'm a Dutchman. No doubt the management would say that safety from relegation is the priority and needs must, but I'd assume, and I could be wrong, that most fans, brought up on at least an attempt to play football, would prefer the team to play something watchable and go down fighting than adopt what scarily looked on Wednesday like John Beck's Cambridge approach from the 1980s. So much for progressive coaching. Maybe try mixing it up a bit? Get them thinking it'll be another blitzkrieg and instead throw it short to someone to put a cross in when the defenders are still confused? I don't know, but wow it was pretty one-dimensional.

Er, so anyway, the actual preview...Chester all look like massive nutjob criminals, but they're fallible, having lost two of their last five, including a 3-0 defeat to Stockport on Boxing Day, reflecting a general tendency this term towards homesickness when away from the Deva. The jury's very much still out on the Bulls under this regime, but there's clearly only one winner. Put your cash on the Whites to replicate Blyth's 8-1 win against the Blues, but maybe not too much of it. Onwards and upwards.

And TOE, try kicking dead balls in attacking areas a bit harder and higher.

Everyone wants everything to click, and I'm sorry this is all narky, and maybe Boxing Day was just a bad day at the office. A performance tomorrow like that at Bradford, and a win, would go some way to suggesting that the club's in safe hands after all. And I'm only being narky because I care. Is narky a word? 

COYW