By Paul Green at Hayes Lane
BROMLEY boss Andy Woodman admitted his frustration after Salford City effectively ended his side’s outside League Two play-off hopes with a 3-2 victory at Hayes Lane.
Things looked promising for the hosts when they went ahead after just eight minutes as Ossama Ashley got the final touch from Adam Mayor’s delivery for an own goal.
But the advantage was soon wiped out by Cole Stockton’s leveller and Salford were in front by the 28th minute thanks to Kelly N’Mai, both goals coming after Bromley cheaply surrendered possession.
Stockton increased their lead just after the hour with his second of the afternoon and even though the prolific Michael Cheek pulled one back 74 minutes, Bromley couldn’t muster an equaliser.
Defeat left Woodman’s side ten points adrift of the final play-off spot and although it has on paper been a respectable debut campaign in the Football League, the manager felt things could have been even better.
He explained: “I think on the outside everyone on the outside would rate it as a successful season because we were one of the favourites to go down.
“Personally speaking if you want the honest truth I’m a bit disappointed we aren’t higher and up in the play-offs because that’s what I set out to do.
“When you sort of look and reflect over the season, we’ve probably got ourselves to blame that we are not a little bit higher than we are.
“We were 3-0 up at Salford in the away game and got pegged back to 3-3.
“I’m just using Salford as an example because today we’ve gifted them two goals and there have been a lot of moments throughout the season where we’ve done that.
“I know we are learning on the job but we can’t keep saying we are learning. We’ve got to make sure we are a bit more solid, a bit more resilient and a bit more street savvy.”
Despite now having very little to play for, the Bromley boss is still demanding his charges finish with a flourish with just seven games remaining.
Woodman said: “We’ve got to make sure we go back to keeping clean sheets.
“All of this nice play here, nice play there, scoring two goals – it is all irrelevant if you keep conceding. That’s what we are doing at the moment.
“I’ve learnt one or two things about one or two players, which you do.
“We’ve got to make sure we finish this campaign as strongly as possible.
“It has been a great campaign but it hasn’t finished yet and we’ve got to make sure we get some momentum into the final games.
“Play-offs and all that, it’s not even a conversation now.
“But what is a conversation is that we finish as high up the table as we can for this football club.”
