Individual errors are costing us points says Ford

The Puritans slipped to a third straight Evo-Stik League South defeat on Saturday. St Ives Town won 2-1 at the Banbury Plant Hire Community Stadium to take home all three premier division central points.

First half goals from Andrew Osei-Bonsu and Benjamin Seymour-Shove gave the visitors the interval advantage. Top scorer Ravi Shamsi reduced the arrears after the restart but United could not get back on level terms.

Ford told Puritans Radio: “We did enough to get something out of that game and I’m not sure we deserved to lose it but individual errors are costing us.

“That was the best we’ve started the first 15 or 20 minutes to a game for a long time, we passed the ball well and got down the sides of St Ives. But then we contrived to gift them the first goal, we had the ball in their box but gave it away and ten seconds later it’s in the back of our net.

“We lost control of the game because we stopped playing the way we had been. For the second goal we decided to play a square ball across the back and we were too slow to react.

“At 2-0 down we talked about getting the next goal which we did but we lost our way and St Ives managed the game well. In the second half we hit too many long balls and our quality in the final third was woeful.

“We showed good quality for our goal but from then on we just kept pumping the ball up to Ricky Johnson and, despite his strength in the air, any well organised defence is going to be able to deal with that.”