Dave Challinor disappointed with Stockport’s second-half display at Harrogate

Posted Sunday, February 12, 2023 by PA

Demanding Stockport boss Dave Challinor insisted his players cannot afford to let their second-half standards slip despite winning 3-1 at Harrogate.

Promotion hopefuls County led 2-0 at the break following a dominant opening 45 minutes thanks to goals from Myles Hippolyte and Isaac Olaofe.

But the visitors then let struggling Harrogate back into the game, with on-loan Southampton winger Kazeem Olaigbe reducing the deficit just past the hour on his EFL debut.

Will Collar went on to make the points safe for the Hatters 10 minutes later, but Challinor was unhappy with the manner in which his team’s performance levels dipped after the interval.

He said: “It was a brilliant first-half performance. We played out really well and caused them problems, deservedly getting two goals and we perhaps should have had more.

“But you strive, as a football team, to do that over 90 minutes and I was really disappointed by our second-half performance, especially the first 20 minutes, because we are big on controlling what we can control and spoke at half-time about trying to get the next goal in a secure fashion.

“We stopped doing all the good things we had in the first half.

“We stopped getting on the ball and we stopped trying. Whereas we won every battle in the first half, we also lost every battle at the start of the second and we have to learn from that, because I hope being 2-0 up at half-time can become a regular occurrence. But, the next time, it needs to be a lot more comfortable than it was after that.

“It’s great, though, to be able to learn after a win and, when we did respond and got a third goal, we did look comfortable in the end within our shape.”

Harrogate remain just three points above the relegation zone, with manager Simon Weaver frustrated his team could not build on last weekend’s surprise 1-0 win at Carlisle.

“We weren’t good enough in the first half,” he said. “Losing 2-0 at half-time gave us an uphill task after we hadn’t started the game as fast as we wanted to do.

“After last week’s clean sheet, it was also disappointing to concede three goals. Kazeem showed a good little bit of skill on a good debut for him on a personal level to get us back in the game at 2-1, but they had two more opportunities to win the match after that and took the second, because they have got that belief.

“You could see that goal knocked the stuffing out of us, though, because it came when we thought we were pushing to get a second ourselves.”