The Debrief: McIntyre 'appalled' as Chester hit for five by Hereford on chastening evening

Chester were beaten 5-2 by relegation-threatened Bulls at Sixways Stadium

Pat Jones on the attack at Sixways (CHARLIE STOCKTON)

In his post-match assessment of Chester’s dismal 5-2 loss at Hereford on Tuesday, Blues boss Calum McIntyre said that the performance was “absolutely criminal”.

Having built up a little head of steam, albeit against sides battling in the lower reaches of the National League North, three wins and a draw from their last four games gave rise to some confidence and optimism heading down the final stretch, the final run of McIntyre’s time in charge at the club.

Chatter around a play-off push may have been very hushed and caveated with the fact that those around them had, in some cases, multiple games in hand on the Blues, but it was a little bit of positivity amid what has, largely, been a rather gloomy season for Chester, one where the highs of last season’s play-off final push have seemed a million miles away.

Fin Shrimpton handed Chester the lead at Sixways in Worcester on Tuesday, the game played at the home of Worcester Warriors RUFC due to ongoing pitch issues at Hereford’s ageing Edgar Street home, but Justin Donawa levelled matters on 17 minutes, with Cormac Daly handing the Bulls the lead just after the half-hour mark.

Connor Woods would level for Chester from the spot on 36 minutes, but just three minutes later the hosts had the advantage again through Keziah Martin. It was a theme that would continue into the second half as Daly added a second on 75 minutes, with George Munday completing the rout five minutes later.

It was a chastening evening for Chester, one where the squad’s flaws were exposed and one that likely unravelled a lot of the goodwill that had been built up over the previous four games. If the 2-0 win at Leamington on Saturday was calm, confident, professional and assured, the error-strewn performance at Sixways was anything but, and some players who featured will have done little to ingratiate themselves to any potential new boss watching on when it comes to considering who stays and who goes this summer.

DEFENSIVE PROBLEMS

Tom Davies, in the two games he has played for the Blues has brought calm, class, leadership and experience to a backline that has seen its line-up change more than Fleetwood Mac this season.

The 33-year-old missed out on Tuesday through a knock, and his absence was keenly felt, with Tom Leak, who has struggled to recapture his form this season and suffered visibly low confidence, not a like-for-like replacement. On a big, expansive pitch like Sixways, defensive problems can be exposed badly, especially in transition, and the decision to replace Kevin Roberts at the break with a more pacy Nathan Woodthorpe would’ve played into that thinking.

Chester had cut out the mistakes in the two games since Davies’ arrival, but they surged back against the Bulls across a worrisome 90 minutes.

But the absence of one defender, who has seen two clean sheets in his first two games, cannot be so drastic as to ship five against a team, while having some kind of ‘new manager bounce’, admittedly, are still the same squad that dropped to second bottom in the league and left with a mountain to climb to achieve survival.

A speedy return for Davies to the starting line-up for the visit of another side with a new boss this weekend, Spennymoor Town, will be very much hoped for. The reliance on such a thing probably highlights the issues that the club have had defensively this season.

CUTTING IT OUT

Nobody likes to be loudly and heavily criticised for the failings of a task they are in charge of delivering, but this is football and it is the nature of the beast. The criticism is barbed, cutting and far more up close and personal than it is in the higher echelons of the English game. It can be hard to swallow.

There were claims of some to-ing and fro-ing in relation to some criticism being dished out directly towards the Chester bench at Hereford, although it is important for me to stress that I wasn’t privy to such things, but had been the recipient of a number of claims. It isn’t the first time such claims have emerged this season, but whatever has happened, it needs to be nipped in the bud. Given the delicate nature of fan sentiment at the moment, where a couple of good results then met with a negative one can bring morale crashing down, adding any further fuel to the fire is not wise.

I’m not using this as a platform to admonish or absolve anybody, but anything that creates even greater fractures between team, staff and fans at this juncture of the season needs to be snuffed out, and quickly.

WHAT THE MANAGER SAID

Speaking to Chester FC TV, McIntyre said: “I’m appalled at some of what I’ve seen this evening.

“A really, really sobering evening. Disappointing underplays the result and a performance that is so far away from what’s required. I spend a lot of time, and have done over the last three and a half years, asking my stars to come out and try and deflect a little bit from individuals and moments in the game, because I think that’s a responsibility you have to do as the manager. Possibly don’t need to do that in the situation we’re in, because that tonight was absolutely criminal. And I think for a decent following of supporters at home, you will feel like I feel that I’ve seen that so many times before.

“I think it’s just going to try and take the opportunity to give a real, honest reflection on the game. Came here, started well, went 1-0 up and gift an equalising goal away. That can happen, that can happen. What can’t happen is the self‑inflicted capitulation that then follows, that happened at Cambridge. At Chorley. At South Shields. So many games where, over the years, we’ve built a reputation for ourselves of being a really solid defensive unit, maybe underwhelming in the final third and in the ‘Goals For’ column.

“This season, understandably, people are watching us week in, week out. Myself, the staff. I would hope the players would reflect on it as well. Because it’s on us, let’s not do the nonsense of it.

“But tonight, in individual moments and errors from individuals, when that happens, and it’s 1-1, and the crowd here, you get right behind them, you almost feel like it’s harder to play here than at Edgar Street. The fans here, you have to keep them quiet. They can really get behind the team, and they did this evening. You’ve had the perfect start, something’s gone against you. Right, have an opportunity to rebuild. We go behind, and then you’re thinking, ‘OK’, and I thought that’s where the game got away from us. We equalise, and then the manner of the third goal. Goal three, goal four and goal five are very nearly identical. If you’re going to gift possession away in the middle of the pitch under no pressure, the team’s on the transition to go and put the ball in your net.

“For that to have happened for the third goal, you’re going at half‑time, you can see where we struggled a little bit in the first half, there’s a little rotation in the middle of the pitch that was hurting us, for them to get the one-v-one on our right‑hand side, made a little tweak to give us an extra man.

“We come out, we have loads of possession, we get in, we have three massive chances, it doesn’t go in the net. That can happen. But the final 20 minutes from the fourth goal, like you say, possession gifted away in the middle of the pitch, and then the fifth goal, like I say, it’s borderline identical. How many times has that happened this season? Naturally, yes, I’m responsible. Collectively, we’re responsible, we’ve fallen short.

“But that tonight, I’ve never been involved in a game where individual errors have been so, so obvious, and have been so frequent, and that is why we’ve got to take our medicine tonight, because that isn’t what we’ve done over recent years. I didn’t see it coming. We had a conversation as a staff after the Telford game of, unfortunately this season we’ve been that kind of group, where a result like that can come out of nowhere and you don’t really see it coming. We’re on a really good run before we get beat by South Shields at home, you concede the three goals in a half, it’s like tonight, three in one, two in another. We didn’t see that coming. The Telford result slaps you in the face on Boxing Day, and it is a fragility and a weakness and a lack of confidence, all those things, they’re the reasons for it.

“No‑one is going to fix it for anyone else other than the individuals, and anyone other than us collectively as a group. But there is no dressing that up tonight, we’ve fallen so, so short of what’s required, what I’ve seen in recent weeks, and we were quite rightly on the end of a hiding. When you see some of the defending and the openness of the game at times today, what can you, as a manager, put that down to? I do think individual errors, so I’d rather try and analyse why does that happen, and why is it the same individuals or the same types of goals, because that has been a theme, and if you reflect, and in 11 games’ time we’ll reflect on our season over a 46, how many times has that been the case, that something goes against us, adversity of any kind, far too often self‑inflicted, and the inability to react to it, to cope with it, the opposition get their tails up and we get punished for it.

“It’s a theme where we’re not talking about one, two or three, I’ve just reeled a couple off there, but if we were to sit down and talk about it in more detail, we’ve found so many games where we conceded one, we conceded two, too many times we conceded three goals in a 45‑minute period.

“It’s not from tactical elements of we’re too deep, we have a pressing structure and we’re getting it wrong, it’s none of those things, the type of goals we conceded. I describe this game as it looked like the Radcliffe game in the second half, you can have a lot on the ball, you can feel like you’re building pressure and territory, and entering the final third, which it’s undeniable that we did that tonight, as bizarre as it is that we’ve scored two goals away from home again, and five have gone in our net, four of which are direct results of transitions, counter‑attacks, but giving the ball away under no pressure.

“Now, respectfully, quite rightly, collective responsibility, the manager at the top of that, we’ve done that all season, and we all know how that’s played out. You can’t coach those things in that moment, and that’s what’s been really, really difficult for us.

“The bigger thing for me that I’ve got to look at between now and the end of the season is things can go against you in games of football, things can play out that are out of your control, too many of them are in our control, and we are giving ourselves mountains to climb. But I’m talking to you now, I’m absolutely shell‑shocked about what I have watched over the last 90 minutes, because I didn’t see that coming. But I say that with the caveat of I’m aware that we’ve done that so many times, so many times, and that is why we are where we are, and we have the challenges that we have between now and the end of the season.

“The reality about the situation we’re in is to move on, the next game, but that’ll hurt me, that really hurts me. As an individual, as an honest, as a manager managing a team that have fallen short up to this point this year, that have a big challenge ahead of ourselves, I can assure you, on a personal level, that hurts me this evening. That really does. I care deeply about my profession and what I put out on the football pitch.

“I hope we have 19, 20 individuals that think the same, and I hope it’s a reference point between now and the end of the season of when you make those errors, if you don’t deal with the reasons for why those errors happen, and the feeling you might have and all those things, that’s what happens.

“We played a side tonight that fought for their lives, thought they were excellent, thought they deserved credit for the way they took the chances, for the situation they’re in. Teams are going to fight, and teams that are in a scrap like they are, and we didn’t match that, and that is, we have to take our medicine, and genuinely, that really, really hurts this evening.”