Boss Tim Flowers says there's a lack of spine or leaders following Stratford Town's collapse at Stourbridge

A DISAPPOINTED Tim Flowers admitted Stratford Town “don’t have enough spine or leaders” in the group following Monday night’s 4-2 defeat to Stourbridge.

First-half goals from Ashley Sammons and Leroy Lita had seemingly put the visitors in control, but a total collapse after the break saw Flowers' men miss out on the chance to climb up to eighth in the Southern Premier Central table.

Reece Styche, Jason Cowley and Joseph Hull all scored in the space of six second-half minutes before Jordan Williams put through his own net to cap off a mad 13-minute spell that saw the Glassboys move into a 4-2 lead.

Flowers has pointed out in the past how his team have become harder to beat since he took charge, but the former Blackburn Rovers goalkeeper did not shy away from the fact the goals conceded at Stourbridge were poor and that his players "lost the physical battle".

“I thought we did OK in the first half. We looked in control of the game, got through them and on the wrong side of them time and time again," he said.

“We probably should have been more than 2-0 up and my exact words to the lads at half-time were ‘now this is what good teams do. You have to show your opponent nothing, you can’t show them any chinks in your armour. When the ball is turned over you hurt them badly'.

“My message was to show Stourbridge nothing and instead we gave them four goals. They upped their tempo and they ruffled us up a bit. Historically, through this season, this team doesn’t like that.

“If we ship a goal it has to be three or four. When a team does that habitually there’s a problem and the goals we conceded were really poor.”

The Bards boss added: “When we concede a goal everything we do goes out the window. Everyone concedes a goal, we haven’t committed mass murder. You’ve just got to get back into the game and carry on, it doesn’t have to be nine-ten-Jack all the while.

“It happened at Needham Market. We were 1-0 down at half-time, despite being the better side, then we concede 20 seconds after kick-off and we fell apart.

“That seems to be in our DNA and we don’t have enough spine or leaders in the set-up.

"To move up to eighth would have been a big thing, but now we've dropped a place. Really, we lost the game because we lost the physical battle. In the second half, when they got right into us, we looked like we could crumble at any minute and I've seen quite a bit of that.

"You've got to earn the right to win a football match. We got ourselves into the box seat in the first half, but then we just crumbled in the second half."

With eight games to go, Flowers has challenged the Bards to finish as high as they can. Stratford have a weekend off before returning to action with a home game against Leiston on Saturday, 19th March. They're then back at home on Tuesday, 22nd March when Hitchin Town visit the Arden Garages Stadium.

However, Flowers also pointed out that the Bards might have to start thinking about recruitment for next year if the want to push for honours in the Southern Premier Central.

"The club's going to have to look at next season in terms of how we recruit and how we want to play in this division," he said.

"If you get out-muscled and out-manned, you're not going to win anything, so it's something we're going to have to look at."