Chris Agutter admitted frustration after Sutton United were held to a goalless draw by Aldershot Town on Boxing Day.
In a contest that struggled to find rhythm or quality throughout, the U’s failed to really test the Shots’ backline, but despite an injury crisis prior to kick-off, did enough to secure a point and a clean sheet heading into their final match of the year away at Southend United.
Assessing the match as a whole, the Sutton boss was candid in his assessment of a game that never truly came to life.
“A game of little or no quality I’d say. Certainly not one for the neutral, a game where we never really got going.”
“I don’t think their goalkeeper has really had a save to make, maybe first half, back end of the first half where we found a little bit of momentum but other than that not a lot really happened. Certainly from our perspective and just a game where we just kept playing backwards all the time.”
“I always gauge how well we’re playing by how often we go back to the goalkeeper and just kept going back to the goalkeeper and where they’re man for man all over the pitch it’s on to go forwards, missing opportunities to play forwards, not playing forwards, keep playing backwards, couple that with when we did play forwards it didn’t stick. Terrible combination that, because when you play backwards you’re obviously then inviting an avoidable press and then you’ve got to potentially bypass ten outfield players for really intricate play.”
“We certainly weren’t going to do that today, the only other way really I think, to break that sort of man to man press is to miss it out and when it doesn’t stick back to goal, tend to come back incredibly quick and you just get the non-event that was that game today.”
With Sutton’s injury list remaining extensive, Agutter was forced to manage minutes carefully, calling on players who were not fully fit to get through the contest.
The likes of Hayden Muller and Jack Taylor both featured throughout despite the former limping off last week against Solihull Moors, while the latter was restricted to the bench due to a problem himself.
Nonetheless, Agutter was full of praise for the duo, along with Brandon Njoku who came off the bench despite not being fully fit.
“Brandon came on – he’s nowhere near fit – but we haven’t got another centre-forward option. We had to change shape just to try and get a bit more of a presence up there with Dav [Rodari] because we weren’t playing through the pitch.”
“We weren’t playing through any potential overload, as I said, we’re there man-to-man. We just needed to put another one in the top line just to try and help us to go back to front, but Brandon, as I said, nowhere near fit.”
“Hayden Muller, to be fair to him, he’s played 96 minutes there today and again, he’s got a problem. Jack Taylor needed to come off after an hour, but fortunately we made him stay out there because he’s done some really good bit of defending, 1v1 defending towards the back end of the game. We’re a million miles away from having a team out there that’s 100% at the races physically, which is obviously very challenging.”
Despite the lack of attacking fluency though, Sutton did at least come away with a clean sheet, something that offered a small consolation after recent results.
“The positives are that we’ve maintained our unbeaten record at home in 90 minutes.”
“We’ve picked up another point when pretty much everyone around us has dropped points, so we’ve actually gained on two or three teams above us and we were very poor and we’ve managed to not get beat and yeah, a clean sheet.”
“I’m really struggling to sort of enjoy those positives to be fair; when you think back to the Shrewsbury game, Gateshead, Halifax, Truro away, so much more fluent, so much more dynamic, just a better watch, so much more threatening, miles more intensity in our attacking play.”
“When you compare that to today, it looked like two completely different teams, so, yeah, it’s more questions than answers, unfortunately.”
The point did at least halt a short losing run, although Agutter admitted it came in far from convincing fashion ahead of the final fixture of the year.
“As I said, it’s a point gained just in the most ugly fashion and that I’ve seen in a long time, to be fair.”
“It’s one game unbeaten going into a difficult season away day against Southend, but our attitude again will be the same, we’ll go there, we’ll try and win the game. We tried to win the game today despite the level of performance; I don’t think there’s any lack of effort today at all and I think that’s probably the reason that we have managed to pick up a point today when we were as poor as what we were, because there were moments against Solihull where in that ten-minute spell where our recovery running and back tackling wasn’t good enough.”
“We could have affected a couple of their goals miles better than what we did on the day and to be fair today there was plenty of effort, there was plenty of commitment. All 11 players had a right go, it just lacked quality, that’s a positive in some respects but we’re going to need to be a lot better against Southend but we will be, I’m sure of that because hopefully by then a few more of those lads in there that are walking wounded, and there’s a lot of them, as I’ve said, we can get them closer to full fitness.”
“We’re banged up, like I said pre-match, we need help, we need to bolster, like I said in the programme notes, we’ve got lads out on loan, but a majority of those players, as ruthless as it sounds, I don’t think they’re going to be able to help us and don’t improve the level of the team, so when you’re loaning players out, it’s with a view to creating gaps in the squad to try and bring players in.”
