‘Fed up’ - Kevin Phillips left frustrated by South Shields home defeat against Hyde United

Kevin Phillips was left ‘frustrated and disappointed’ after watching South Shields fall to a home defeat against promotion rivals Hyde United.

The Mariners went into the game looking to move on from Saturday’s FA Cup first round exit at the hands of League One club Forest Green Rovers and push their way firmly into the Northern Premier League title race. But questionable decision-making and a poor final delivery cost them as they consistently wasted opportunities to put the current league leaders under pressure.

And they were punished with just 12 minutes remaining when Brad Roscoe fired home the only goal of the game to earn his side a maximum reward for a performance full of hard work, discipline and organisation at the 1st Cloud Arena. Mariners boss Phillips admitted his frustration at discussing the shortcomings in the final third once again and felt his side would have came out on top if they had produced more quality in key attacking areas.

He told The Gazette: “I am fed up of saying it and it was the same on Saturday against a League One side. If we attacked and put our head on things in the same way we defend our own box, then I’d be standing here talking about a win.

“I’m frustrated and disappointed, I want to go in there and rant and rave at them, but when I calm down, you just have to talk about football. You hear managers at every level say it, even the Premier League, you don’t win games if you don’t take your chances. It’s as simple as that. The most disappointing thing is it’s come off the back of receiving all the adulation of the weekend and I was wary of this game. Credit to Hyde, they came here, they caused us a few problems, but if we’d taken our own opportunities we would have won the game.”

The defeat has seen the Mariners slip to ninth place in the table and they currently sit six points adrift of the leaders. They have the benefit of holding as many as four games in hand on the sides above them in the table - but Phillips has warned his players they can only make those games count if they became more clinical in front of goal.

He said: “It hasn’t gone our way, we can’t be all doom and gloom. We lost a football match but we have to move on and get back to hard work in training. We are still in a good position, we have games in hand but we have to be more clinical.

“We will analyse it, we will look at it with them, but it can become frustrating because you end up showing them chance after chance after chance. We put a lot on the players and ask them to watch their own clips back. I wrote on the board it’s about the individual and about them stepping up. We know what we have to do in training and on matchday so we will go and do that.”

The Mariners are back in action on Saturday when Belper Town visit the 1st Cloud Arena.