Harrogate Town's system not to blame for Stockport County loss, insists Simon Weaver

Seven days prior to taking on Stockport County, his struggling Harrogate Town side had produced a gritty, resolute defensive display as they edged out high-flying Carlisle United to claim a much-needed League Two victory, keeping their first clean-sheet in 10 attempts.

But, on Saturday afternoon, the Sulphurites looked anything but convincing at the back – or further up the pitch for long periods – as they suffered a 3-1 home defeat to the promotion-chasing Hatters.

Despite lining up in the same 4-2-3-1 system with nine of the same players in the starting XI, the difference in terms of Harrogate’s level of performance was stark.

Weaver, understandably, didn’t see the sense in changing too much, given how pleased he was by what he saw last time out, and instead pointed to a failure to effectively carry out their game-plan and a lack of “bite” as the major factors behind the Sulphurites’ third loss in five matches.

"The system is what worked well for us last week and the second half today. It’s the same system that the best teams in the land play,” he said.

"We went with the same line-up apart from Kayne [Ramsay] coming out with his injury and just one other change, giving the young lad [Kazeem Olaigbe] his debut and he ended up being our man of the match,

"But, we fell short today in terms of executing the game-plan, didn’t we. Last week, we got a clean-sheet and a fantastic win against a top-three team, but we couldn’t reproduce the same levels of performance.

"The plan was to get the overloads down the sides in two-versus-one scenarios, but we didn’t move the ball well enough or cleverly enough to expose the areas where they didn’t have the numbers.

"It’s very difficult in League Two when you’re a small club and the underdogs, but we’ve always relished that. On Saturday, that first half performance, I don’t think that was relishing the atmosphere, relishing proving people wrong, so we need to have a bit more bite about us as we got bullied in certain areas of the pitch.”

Weaver went on to describe all three of the goals that Town conceded as “soft”, but felt that they owed more to individual errors than collective failings, with full-backs Warren Burrell and Matty Foulds caught out for County’s first and third strikes of the afternoon.

"I couldn’t blame the two centre-halves. I’ll have to see the second goal again, but I don’t think there’s a massive mistake from them,” the Harrogate chief added.

"Individually it was errors at key moments, which can happen. We gave the ball away for the first goal. He [Warren Burrell] tried something and nobody was there to bail him out.

"The third goal is annoying, really frustrating. It was too easy to get the cross in and their lad peeled off at the back post very well.

"We’ve got to dust ourselves down and move on and look to put it all together for the full 90 minutes like we did in the previous game.”

Despite Saturday’s loss, Town remain 20th in the League Two standings and three points clear of the relegation zone heading into Tuesday’s trip to Salford City, 7.45pm kick-off.