'No positives' - Lee Clark offers brutal assessment of Hartlepool United's defeat at Kidderminster Harriers

Lee Clark admitted there were ‘no positives to take’ from Hartlepool United’s disappointing defeat at National League rivals Kidderminster Harriers on Friday night.

Pools travelled to the Midlands looking to build on their hard-earned home win against Woking just six days earlier - but found themselves wanting as they were dominated by their hosts throughout a lacklustre 90-minute display. After enjoying the better of the opening half-hour, the Harriers grabbed a deserved lead when Pools wing-back Neo Eccleston deflected a cross beyond goalkeeper Nathan Fisher.

Eccleston’s night was then brought to a premature end when he was shown a second yellow card in the early stages of the second-half and the visitors made the most of their numerical advantage when Callum Stewart doubled their lead and secured a deserved win.

Clark warned his players another poor performance can not be repeated after the defeat left them in fourteenth place in the National League table.

He told the club website: “Really poor, really disappointing, worst performance by a mile this season. No positives to take - but I accept responsibility, I’m the leader. We didn’t take the momentum from the weekend into tonight. From the first minute, Kidderminster were better than us. It was 4-4-2 against 4-4-2. Out of possession, we were poor. We didn’t drop on to any second balls. We didn’t win any first contacts.

“They won everything. Ultimately, it didn’t allow us to play and when we had the ball, we were really poor in our execution of passes and we never really got passes going. We didn’t test the keeper in the first-half and we actually looked more solid in the second-half when we were down to ten men than we did in the first-half. I’ve got to take that one and make sure it’s not repeated and go again.”

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‘Everything has to improve’

Another away day is next on the agenda for Clark and his players as they visit Altrincham in midweek - and the Pools boss has hinted he could make changes ahead of the game as he looks to find consistency in performance and results from his players.

He said: “Everything has to improve. My performance has to improve massively and everyone else off the back of that does. We have to go again, we can’t allow this to keep happening. It’s like on a rollercoaster. One minute we are up, next minute we are down and it’s too inconsistent. You think you come off the back of a decent performance on Saturday with a win, then you come here and you show determination, desire, get on the ball, be competitive - but no, we didn’t do any of that. We’ve got to analyse it and understand why. Maybe I was wrong to keep the same players, maybe I need to start freshening things up and see what’s going on and what we need to change.”

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