Ford backs his players despite late setback at Royston

The Banbury United boss saw his side produce a gritty performance before going down to a solitary penalty late on in Saturday’s BetVictor Southern League clash.

Matt Bateman’s disputed spot-kick was all that separated the two sides but the Puritans slipped down to ninth on the back of Saturday’s defeat. It was hard to take but Ford knew his players had given their all at Royston.

He said: “My players’ attitude was magnificent at Royston against a very good side, sometimes you have do that when you don’t have a lot of the ball. We showed great resilience.

“Their player went down very easily for the penalty but in other games we’ve just not quite been getting over the line at the moment and that’s probably down to the fact that we’re not as good as earlier in the season.

“But we’re missing some key players in recent weeks, Jaanai Gordon, who was the league’s joint top scorer when he left, Kynan Isaac and Morgan Roberts who were doing great for us down the left flank, Claudio Dias and Lee Henderson, that’s half a team.

“I’m a realist, we’re not quite the same team as earlier in the season because we’ve not got those players in the team anymore. Besides his goals, Jaanai was great at keeping the ball up the pitch for us, it’s coming back too quickly at the moment.”