Cox wants to see Kettering Town's ruthless side

Paul Cox will be looking for “a bit more ruthlessness” from his Kettering Town team when they take on Curzon Ashton this weekend.

A stop-start season for the Poppies has, so far, seen them suffer three defeats in their first four Vanarama National League North fixtures.

However, those three losses have come against the teams currently occupying the top-three places in the early standings with Gloucester City, AFC Fylde and Southport leading the way.

And while Kettering boss Cox is all-too aware that it is a “results business”, he feels his team’s displays have, in general, been better than the early points they have put on the board.

Now he is hoping they will start to learn from their mistakes and seizing the chances they create.

“I am just looking for a bit more ruthlessness in general,” the Poppies manager said.

“It’s been an interesting start with the teams we have played, with Covid and the breaks and there have been fine lines in the games we have had with the teams who are currently the top three in the division.

“We need to be looking at those fine lines and improving in those areas if we want to be competitive this year.

“We have had a lot of discussions with the players about that and we need to make sure we are learning from it all.

“There are good teams in our league with good resources and we really need to be capitalising on the opportunities we create.

“If you look at the Fylde and Southport games in particular, we have had chances to win both of them while we could have been more ruthless in our own penalty area at times.

“Apart from the Gloucester game where hindsight is a wonderful thing and something was clearly happening in our squad before we had the outbreak of Covid, it’s been fine lines between us winning matches and not.

“We did great against Chelmsford (in the 2-0 FA Cup success) and Bradford Park Avenue (in a 3-1 home win) and then we have played three of the top four, two of them away and all on a Tuesday night and, in terms of our performances, I don’t think we’ve been bad.

“But this is a results business.

“I have tried not to be too hard because I believe that, over the season, if we maintain our standards and alter those little one per cents then we will be reaching the goals we have set for ourselves.”