It was a second win in a row and exactly what manager Ian Allinson had asked for but the St Albans City boss admitted they need to be much braver on the ball in what remains of their National League South play-off chase if there is to be a happy ending.

The 2-0 win against Weston-super-Mare on Tuesday night saw Solomon Sambou pounce twice in the second half to clinch the three points, adding them to those picked up in Saturday’s 1-0 success against Dulwich Hamlet.

But Allinson was disappointed with the team’s first-half showing which he felt was another case of them “not playing particularly well but working extremely hard”.

He said: “Both teams have tried to play football but neither kept the ball well.

“We need an end product. If we’re going to play with two up front we need to be getting balls in the box.

We’re working extremely hard at the moment but we’re lacking that quality.

“The one thing that came out of half-time was we have to be brave on the ball and Glen [Alzapiedi] was preaching that.

“If we’d come away and lost, as long as we had worked hard and tried to retain possession, nobody was going to have a moan.

“There wasn’t an energy in the first half. We got into some good positions but our passing was slow or we went side to side and [only] when we started to go forward with a purpose did we start to cause them problems.”

“My question at half-time was we’ve had a long season and we’ve put ourselves in and around things but I could see the players throwing it all down the drain with a sloppy 45 minutes.”

Part of Allinson’s disappointment in what he witnessed in the first half came from a lack of leadership on the pitch.

One impressive part of City’s play was their high press when Weston’s defence had the ball and that pressure helped create Sambou’s first goal.

But the impetus and encouragement to do that came from the bench with both Allinson and Alzapiedi shouting themselves hoarse.

Allinson said: “We asked about leaders on the pitch and we seem to be lacking them. “It’s wrong that it’s got to be coming from Glen and myself but somebody needed to be taking responsibility out there.

“And I couldn’t stand there much longer and watch what was happening in the first half.

“It should be coming from all of us and we should all be encouraging each other to go and squeeze and chase and put people under pressure and ultimately win the ball back further up the pitch.

“That’s what we did in the second half.”

Saints’ first chance to put that right comes on Saturday when they go to Chippenham.

The boss said: “We’re going to have dig deep. They play the slope well at their place and they know if they win they’ll be back in and around us.

“We have to go there and be brave but we need to be on the front foot from the first minute.”