Bartley says Marlow must have been on Santa's naughty list this Christmas

The Christmas period couldn't have gone much worse for Marlow, with Mark Bartley saying his side must have been on ‘Santa’s naughty list’ after they were edged out of the play-offs following three successive defeats.

The Blues had been hoping to challenge the likes of Chertsey, Southall, and Raynes Park Vale for the Isthmian League South Central title - and they may still do so - however, the Blues have given themselves a lot of work to do after defeats to Westfield (2-3), Hartley Wintney (2-3) and Southall (1-2). Bartley's Blues had lost only twice in their first 14 matches; however, they tasted defeat three times within the space of eight days to put a dampener on their Christmas and New Year celebrations.

“We didn’t really play very well against Westfield, it was a bit of a scrappy game, but I didn’t feel like we did enough to win the game,” said Bartley.

“Against Hartley Wintney we cost ourselves with a couple of individual errors. In fact, most of the goals that we’ve conceded have been down to us predominantly. Even against Southall, it’s two individual errors that have cost us the game.

“Fair play to the boys because they’re coming into the dressing room and are apologising to the rest of the boys for it.

“It’s just been one of those spells where any mistake that we make is being punished. That is football sometimes.”

They'll be hoping to lift themselves out of this rut, or blip, when they visit Sutton Common Rangers this evening (Wednesday), however, Bartley isn't unduly concerned about the side's loss of form as he feels they've played well in spells during these matches. Against Southall on Saturday, they created the lion's share of the chances and had more than double the number of penalty box entries compared to their rivals, however, they trailed in the only statistic that really matters with a late goal from Dawid Rogalski (89) proving to be a consolation following strikes from William Montague (27) and Jaden Thompson-Brissett (81).

“We’ve not been playing too badly,” he added. “The second half on Saturday we were very good in fact. But we’re in that rut where it’s not going for us.

“Against Southall we felt we did enough to win the game, but we’ve come away with nothing. I was looking at the statistics and they had six shots all game and we had 16. We had 21 entries into their box, and they had eight. We had eight corners to their three. Whilst that doesn’t mean everything, it shows that we weren’t terrible in the game. We’ve got to cut out the individual errors, we know that, and we’ve also had a couple of knocks like everyone else at this time of year, but we must draw a line under it and have to focus on going to Sutton Common and getting a result.”

The results leave them sixth in the table, now 14 points behind leaders Chertsey, however, they've still got to play the leaders twice this season and have at least two games in hand on all of the teams above them in the South Central table. It is still possible for them to drag themselves back into title contention, however, to do that they'll have to find form sooner rather than later.

“With the New Year’s Day games, quite a few of the teams around us lost, it’s that kind of year with these random results,” said Bartley. “Everyone is going to have a lot of games to play and there will be times when our rivals lose momentum. We’re prepared and we’re ready and we’re eager to get out on the pitch at Sutton to try and get a result.

“We’ve got Aaron McLeish-White coming back into the squad and Noah Amissah who is another forward who has been out for around a year. He’s been playing for Holyport recently and is ready to go again.

“We’re focused and we believe. We see Chertsey are right up there now, but we’ve got them to play twice. We’d probably have to do the double over them but we’re ready to give it a massive effort for 2024 as we must have been on Santa’s naughty list for Christmas.”