Agutter reflects as Tonbridge Angels end Worthing’s unbeaten home record
We need to stop giving teams a leg-up. That was Chris Agutter’s view after Worthing slipped to their first National League South home defeat of the season.
Saturday’s 1-0 loss to Tonbridge left the Rebels 11th and Agutter told the club media: “For the first half, the first 25 minutes especially, Tonbridge deserved to win the game.
“We made a couple of changes [for this game] and adapted a couple of bits in terms of how we pressed, but that didn’t work so that’s on me.
“It’s very disappointing to lose an unbeaten home record. I’ll take the hit on that because we’ve changed a winning team. It was enforced a little bit.”
Agutter said of those opening 25 minutes: “We set up in a certain way, it clearly didn’t work or the information given to the players wasn’t clear enough. That enabled Tonbridge to get a foothold in the game. Credit to Tonbridge, they were really well-coached, well-organised.
“We deserved to lose and I’ll take 99.9% of the responsibility for that.
“We had loads of near misses, loads of territory, loads of possession, loads of chances but we lost the game 1-0 and Tonbridge created chances as well.”
Agutter said the starting point for a good performance was winning first and second balls and winning duels, but they didn’t do that.
He added: “We need to get to the bottom of why we keep giving teams a leg-up in games.”
Agutter would have liked another league game quickly to put the loss behind them but Saturday brings a visit to Southern League side Wimborne in the FA Cup third qualifying round.