Mark Beesley: We didn’t do enough

Warrington Town manager Mark Beesley was left to rue missed chances in the final third after seeing his side fall to a 2-0 Boxing Day defeat to Chester at the Leap76 Stadium.

The Yellows trailed inside 15 minutes and proved unable to wrestle themselves a strong enough foothold in the game from that point on, with their best chances falling the way of captain Josh Amis and Isaac Buckley-Ricketts.

The hosts’ one-goal advantage remained until deep into injury time when, as the Yellows chased the game, a clearance struck substitute Charlie Caton, who was able to roll the ball in to the empty net to seal the win.

Speaking post-match, Beesley said: “We didn’t do enough to win the game in an attacking sense. We gave a really poor goal away, which gave them a real leg-up in the first 15 minutes.

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“They are very good out of possession as well as in it, and to be fair to them, they showed that.

“We still had a couple of great chances before they scored right at the end, so we’re disappointed to come away from here without any points.

“It’s a place where they don’t concede many goals, so we spoke before the game about not giving them a head-start.

“We’ve got a bad habit of doing that. We’ve come up against the big teams this year and given them a start, whether it’s going down to 10 men or giving silly goals away, and it’s hard to come back.

“At places like this, you’re only going to get one or two chances and you’ve got to take them.”

A change in system pre-match saw the Yellows move to a back three, with Peter Clarke returning to join Andre Wisdom and Tom Hannigan at the back.

The Yellows then reverted to their more familiar four-man defence midway through the first half, giving themselves more sights of goal without threatening Seals goalkeeper Wyll Stanway too often.

When asked about the change of shape, Beesley added: “We just thought we needed to be that little bit more solid,”

“Playing with three at the back is something we’ve spoken about, as we’ve got good players there and it gives you more stability.

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“It probably works if we don’t give such a poor goal away, but we’ve done it before this season – it’s not as though we pulled it from nowhere.

“We’ll always have it in the back of our mind to use at times. We felt we needed to get Isaac closer to Josh, so we tweaked a few things and got a bit more of a foothold in the game.

“While we didn’t create much in the second half, we were a bit better in possession and they didn’t really create anything until the last 10 minutes when they got a few counter-attacks.

“We had good control of the ball, but without hurting them as much as I’d have liked us to.”

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