The Shropshire Star

Seaside outing ends in a dry run

01/12/03

Brighton 2 Wrexham 0

Hector SamANOTHER afternoon of Wrexham forwards firing blanks left manager Denis Smith frustrated and disappointed.

He claimed that his men deserved something for their effort but had to admit that they created few openings and their shooting failed.

He said: "We had a lot of the play without creating as many chances as we would have liked. At a goal down we needed a bit of luck but then they scored again, a deflection off Brian Carey, which was very frustrating."

He blamed players for not obeying orders as they failed to keep to his match plan.

"The first goal came from players not marking the people we asked them to mark," he said. "They told me they had changed things on the pitch and that was a decision they had to make but I believe they made the wrong choice."

Again he was left to ponder how best to improve the strike rate after his forwards produced another blank day.

"We will have to look at it and see what we can do but today it's the result that matters."

He made several changes to his side, brought in Jim Whitley for the suspended Darren Ferguson in midfield and started with Chris Armstrong and Hector Sam in attack, supported by Chris Llewellyn.

John Piercy's early goal when he spun on a pass 15 yards out and shot past Andy Dibble gave Brighton the advantage and they seldom looked in any danger of losing the upper hand.

Dibble tipped away an angled shot from Leon Knight and a header from Nathan Jones to keep the score down at the interval

With less than half an hour left, Smith decided to send Lee Jones on for Armstrong but before he could make the switch, Brighton scored again when Richard Carpenter's long range shot hit the underside of the bar and dropped over the line.

Five minutes later Steve Thomas replaced Llewellyn and nearly scored from a free kick which home goalkeeper Ben Roberts dropped at his near post and a defender hacked it away to safety.

With time running out the 180 travelling Wrexham supporters nearly had something to cheer when Lee Jones beat the offside trap and raced through, only to be denied by the goalkeeper.