ANDY WHING was left feeling frustrated after his Solihull Moors side crumbled to a 3-0 defeat to York City on Tuesday night.
Ashley Nathaniel-George registered his third of the season when beating Solihull goalkeeper Laurie Walker to a long ball, before rounding the shot-stopper and firing into an empty net on the brink of half-time.
An injury to the winger saw Tyrese Sinclair enter the frame, who made his mark with a scintillating long-ranged strike into the top corner.
Sinclair rounded off the scoring just three minutes later as a fast York counter-attack saw Lenell John-Lewis thread an inwards pass to the substitute, who coolly slotted home.
The three points, and a seventh clean sheet in 11 for City, sees Adam Hinshelwood’s side leapfrog Forest Green Rovers to move into second position in the Vanarama National League table, level on both points and goal difference with the leaders Barnet.
It’s not been an ideal start to the campaign for Tuesday night’s losers, with Solihull sitting precariously in 14th position despite reaching both the play-off and Isuzu FA Trophy final last season.
Whing confessed his frustration at the midweek outcome, and credited York for their performance, but admitted that his side were forced to play heavily out of position with injuries plaguing the Moors.
“It was really tough to be fair, probably one of the toughest since I’ve been here,” Whing told the Solihull Moors media team.
“I think that when it rains, it pours sometimes.
“Your only striker that is fit, comes off injured [Conor Wilkinson], Whits [Alex Whitmore] comes off injured with his groin as well.
“They are a good team, they look settled and you can see that they have been working on patterns, but so have we.
“We’ve lost how many players and have had to change formation twice in this game.
“We can’t get any rhythm in terms of pattern with different personnel, you look at that front four at the end, it’s barely a front four, with no disrespect.
“We’ve got a right-back playing right-wing, a four and an eight playing as a ten, a ten playing as a striker.
“It’s tough, but I’ll hold my hands up, I take full responsibility because it was a tough one for us tonight.
“The second-half, because of the changes we started just doing our own things and the game became way too open for us, and we got punished.”
Whing felt that the turning point in the contest was Nathaniel-George’s opener, as he believes that it came during the hosts’ best spell in the match.
The Moors manager was pleased with the defensive performance of his side leading up to that goal, feeling that they did well to keep out York’s attacking threat, but admitted that the goal ‘killed’ Solihull.
“The goal in the first-half was [during] our best spell in the game.
“I think that we had had three or four chances at goal, some really good chances as well, and they score.
“They hadn’t really created that much, for all of the attacking talent that they have got on the pitch and all of the attacking talent that they have got on the bench, it’s alright for some.
“They didn’t really create anything, and it was just one long ball with some indecisive from our goalkeeper, they nip in and score probably in our best period of the game.
“That really killed us.”
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