Coach Willmott knows Poppies must find a solution to their goalscoring issues

The Poppies claimed a third 0-0 draw in their last four matches as they battled out a stalemate with fellow strugglers Farsley Celtic.

It was the fourth Vanarama National League North game in a row in which Kettering have failed to score after they had hit six in two matches in wins over Boston United and Banbury United.

First-team coach Willmott was deployed on media duties after the draw with Farsley, which leaves the Poppies still in 18th place and two points clear of no fewer than five teams below them as the race for survival begins to tighten up.

“Obviously we wanted to come and win the game against another team at the bottom of the table to try to push us on,” Willmott said.

“There’s a few teams we are battling against and Farsley are one of them.

“The positives are they didn’t gain any points on us, the clean sheet is good and we defended pretty well as we have been doing for a few games now. We look solid.

“Our issue is at the other end of the pitch. We’re not scoring enough, that’s obvious. We’re not really creating enough chances so we need to look at that.

“It’s strange because if you look back at the Boston game, we were 2-0 down at half-time and we scored three goals and steamrollered them in that second half.

“Then we went onto the next game and it was almost a similar situation when we hit three goals in the second half at Banbury when it was 0-0 at half-time.

“Since then, it’s been a problem for us. It might be that we just need to find the right combinations up front.

“We’re playing a lot of games at the moment so keeping the boys fresh is quite tricky so we are trying to rotate the strikers and forward players.

“But we are looking for them to up their game, try to combine and certainly create more chances than we were able to create in this game.”

The Poppies are back on home soil on Saturday when they host Northamptonshire neighbours and title contenders Brackley Town.