Ian Allinson praised St Albans City’s resilience at Hemel Hempstead Town as they again scored late to remain unbeaten – but he felt they could and probably should have won it.
Saints are undefeated now in the last six Vanarama National League South games with three wins and three draws.
But their last two outings have both required goals inside the last five minutes to do so, Zane Banton’s 86th-minute strike at Hemel grabbing a 1-1 draw.
But from then on City peppered the home goal and that’s where the frustrations arose for the manager.
He said: “We dominated the first 30 minutes and had good spells but though some of our passing looked good on the eye, we weren’t sharp enough.
“We were in some good areas but didn’t put in enough quality.
Second half was quite even and their goal may have been slightly against the run of play but it gave them a lift.
“But in those last few minutes we created four of five unbelievable chances and could have gone on and won it.
“We believe the players have good fitness levels and they get stronger as games go on and as we’ve seen, we score a lot of goals in the last 10 minutes of games.
“But we haven’t made the keeper work enough. A bit more quality and we could have won.”
After struggling defensively at the start of the campaign and suffering a horrendous run in November, City have started to look like play-off challengers once again.
And Allinson now wants them to kick on when they are on top in matches.
He said: “When we have our good spells, we have to punish teams because we aren’t going to dominate for 90 minutes.
“Other teams will punish us and that’s the thing. Teams like Torquay and Woking will punish you if you don’t take your chances.
“We’re still trying to develop players and we have to learn that. The squad today was very young.
“We’ve just got to have that consistent period and try not to drop back into a negative side where we fail to punish the teams we should.
“If we learn from that and grab games by the scruff of the neck, we’ll win more than we lose.”
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