Harrogate Railway must add 'consistency' and 'ruthlessness' to their game, says manager Rob Youhill

The former Harrogate Town winger admits that he has been having sleepless nights, so “frustrated” has he been by the Starbeck outfit’s inability to convert good performances into results, and string together a sequence of results.

Railway have proved that they can mix it with the best sides in NCEL Division One by outplaying and get the better of title-chasing Wakefield AFC and Wombwell Town in recent months, but then gone on to drop points against teams lower down the table.

A 2-1 success away at then-leaders Wakefield was followed up by a draw against Dronfield Town, then a 2-1 home defeat to lowly Selby on Saturday, that result dropping the men to Station View to 10th position, where they now sit 14 points shy of the play-offs.

"Saturday’s result was really disappointing, but the bigger picture shows that we are losing too many games where we are the better team,” Youhill said.

“It’s so frustrating that I’ve stopped even looking at league table and our position because it starts me off thinking about all of the additional points that we should have.

“We started the season so well, showed that we have so much ability, and so expectations have risen and we have got to be better in terms of putting points on the board.

“Consistency is the key, and if I’m completely honest, I’m not entirely sure how address that, but it is starting to become an issue because, just in the last two games, we have dropped five points against two mediocre sides, having beaten two of the top teams not so long before that. I am having sleepless nights thinking about how to try and solve it.

“The other word is ‘ruthlessness’. We should have killed Selby off on Saturday, but we couldn’t find that cutting edge, however that is something that I know we can improve through the work we do on the training ground.”

On how Railway’s lack of a clinical edge, Youhill added: “As a coach, I am very much about performance, if we play really well I can take a lot of solace from that.

"The commitment from thee lads is outrageous, you can’t fault that, but you can do so well in a game, keep the ball, dominate the play and create loads of chances like we did on Saturday, but if we don’t dominate in both boxes then all the quality we have in our team means nothing because we aren’t getting the results.

“Our performances on the whole are pretty much there, however a lot of teams are better than us in both boxes and teams don’t seem to have to work too hard to score against us, whereas we do have to work really hard to get a goal.

"Against Selby, I counted 11 clear chances and 8 half-chances inside the first hour of the game, which we dominated. But we only scored the one goal when we should have been 3-0 or 4-0 up by half-time.

Game sewn up by half-time

fair assessment watching it back more frustration only scored one and ended up losing

can't put finger on it

if it was both second halves be able to address not starting well

no rhyme or reason, always going to be problems such a young team, have to learn faster, have to lear as management team faster as well

went man-for-man from first whistle, started really aggressively, four strikers

up to 60 minutes we were in control of game

three or four up think appropriate, can then change it then see game out, because we couldn’t, needed to continue to what we were doing going forwards

counted up to 60 minutes, 11 Hal-chances and eight good chances

pretty scary, all elements, which we can sort, wrong decision at wrong time in areas around the box, always thinking what do in training to start solving those problem

I am very much about performance, if we play really well I can take a lot of solace from that. The commitment outrageous, can do so well, keep the ball, dominate the game, but if we don’t dominate in both boxes then all quality means absolutely nothing

Performances on the whole are pretty much there, teams are better than us in both boxes and teams don’t seem to have to work too hard to score against us, whereas we do

First 30 seconds we were looking good, set tempo for the whole game, had foot on their throat, never pushed down on it properly,

Make more wrong decisions, real simple choices in key areas,

A lot of local fans down, a lot of people and so many plaudits, so complimentary, entertaining football for the first hour, fair play to the groundsman, but it really cut up

For an hour we played some really good stuff on a pitch I could barely stand up on

Key word is going to be ruthlessness work on it in training hopefully give some one a good pasting some time soon