Phil Babb is not concerned by the loss of Hayes & Yeading’s top scorer Jake Reid and has challenged his players to share the goals around in his absence.
Reid’s United contract was cancelled by mutual consent in the lead up to Christmas and the powerful striker immediately signed for big-spending Conference South leaders Bromley.
His eight goals place him top of the pile in the Hayes & Yeading scoring stakes, but boss Babb has studied the statistics closely and believes looks can be deceiving.
“People look at football in different ways,” Babb said.
“Jake is a good player and Bromley made their intentions known. Once Jake’s head was turned then it’s quite difficult for him to stay focused on the job at hand.
“Some will say ‘you’ve let your leading scorer go’ and I’m not disrespecting him but he’s only scored four goals from open play in 17 starts.
“When you look at Geoff Mitchell, who has got three from nine in open play, you look at the stats and wonder how much of a loss to the group it is.
“We wished him all the best. The league leaders came calling and Jake probably wondered what the best option was for him. I don’t want any distractions in the group so we had the discussion and Jake went. The lad wanted to go in the end, so what’s the point in keeping him?”
Babb will now need to find goals from elsewhere but does not want his team to become reliant on one man.
“What we are trying to implement through the squad is that we need to distribute the goals throughout the side and not remain reliant on one outlet,” he said.
“I’m sure Luke Williams wants to contribute more, Dean Inman can score goals from set-pieces and Kammy [Kamaron English] can score goals. Frankie Merrifield needs to weigh in with a few more. Good teams score from all positions and that’s what we want to look at. We don’t want to put pressure on one man.
“Other lads need to look at their goals to games ratio and perhaps think to themselves that they need to contribute a bit more to the team.”
Hayes & Yeading were due to face Gosport Borough last night (Tuesday) while Saturday’s game at Dorchester Town was postponed.
Meanwhile, Hayes glazing firm and sponsor of United’s under-construction Beaconsfield Road Stadium, Sharda Glass, has been sold to CCPE Architectural Glass Limited following ‘a period of sharp deterioration in its financial position in the last few weeks of December’, the KSA group said in a statement.
