North Ferriby United

Evostik Northern Premier League

Premier Division

Witton Albion  v North Ferriby United

Saturday 16 February 2019

Kick-off 3.00 pm

Ferriby travel to Wincham in Cheshire on Saturday to play Witton Albion in  a Evostik Northern Premier League Premier Division match.

Ferriby remain in a desperate position at the bottom of the table. However there was some relief for the club when they beat Westella &Willerby on Tuesday to reach the semi-final of the East Riding Senior Cup. That game is scheduled to be played on Wednesday 13 March at the Roy West Centre in Hull with a 7pm kick-off.

Ferriby remain 20 points from the safety zone.Their last real hope of kick-starting an escape probably disappeared with the home defeat to Workington last Saturday.

It was a game they could have won but, once again, two poorly defended set-pieces cost them the match.

The win over Westella on Tuesday came via penalty shoot-out after the teams finished all-square after extra-time. The Villagers had one of those nights in front of goal. They had twenty efforts on goal but it was one of those games where nothing would go in. In the end, some coolly taken penalties plus a fine penalty save from debutant keeper Craig O’Grady saw Ferriby through. It is a welcome respite in a difficult season.

Ferriby manager Joe Lamplough commented afterwards,

“We made hard work of it tonight. We had the chances to score far more goals. We have to take that as a big positive because we haven’t really been creating that many chances recently.

“Again, the boys worked hard and it was a good team performance. We were punished for both not taking chances and for making one major mistake in defence.

“We deserved the win and we are obviously still in with a chance of winning a trophy this season. That is a big plus given our overall form.”

Saturday’s opponents, Witton Albion, are in a fairly comfortable 14^th  place in the table. They have a fairly mixed home record with three wins, four draws and five defeats. Goals have been in short supply in those games with Witton scoring 12 and conceding 14.

Albion won the reverse fixture 4-0 in September. The win was as convincing as the score-line suggest as Ferriby struggled to get in to the game

Looking towards Saturday, Lamplough added,

“It’s another tough game for us. They’re mid-table but we want to be winning. I’ll go into it confidently as always. I feel that at some point it’s going to turn for us. Once we get it right and start firing on all cylinders we’ll start to get better results.

“We had to make changes against Westella but everybody should be available again for Saturday.”

As he says above, Lamplough  should have a full squad to choose from. Although work commitments have meant that Paul foot had had to stand-down as manager, he is likely to be in the playing squad on Saturday.

Ferriby’s squad: Lewis Exall, Craig O’Grady, Jordan Windass, Aaron Brettell, Paul Foot, Jamie Waltham, Ben Leyland, Jack Smith, Jack Mail, James Piercy, Dan Nichols, Leon Smith, Joe Lamplough, Josh Vickers, Niah Payne,  Jake Martindale, Gary Bradshaw, Callum Harrison, James Nichols, Joseph Robinson