Mixed emotions for Reed after Leighton win at Stotfold

Lynton Goss slides in to score the winner at Stotfold. Photo: Andrew Parker.

Paul Reed had mixed emotions after seeing his Leighton Town side win 3-2 at Stotfold on Saturday.

Having gone a goal down early on, Leighton rallied to lead by half-time, only to be drawn level again with 20 minutes to go.

But Lynton Goss’s second goal of the game a few minutes later earned all three points for Reed’s men, although he still felt an element of disappointment with some aspects of his side’s play.

He told the club’s media: "When we went 1-0 down I thought we then played some of the best football I’ve seen us play for a while. We scored two well-worked goals, got the ball into feet more and our rotations across the front four caused them a lot of problems.

"I think half-time probably came at the wrong time for us as I felt if we’d played for another ten minutes or so we’d have probably got a third and almost killed the game off.

"I was then actually quite deflated by our performance in the second-half and we resorted too much to what Stotfold were doing and just going long, but putting it on a plate for a 6ft 4in centre-half who just headed everything.

"So it’s mixed emotions really as I felt performance levels were up and down throughout the game but ultimately we’ve come away with three points.”

Leighton continue to sit comfortably in mid-table in the SPL Division One Central on 35 points, 17 points off the play-off places and 18 points above the relegation zone.

Next up, they return home to take on Kidlington, who sit in the bottom three, before then hosting Flackwell Heath on Saturday who are third in the table going into the midweek games.

Reed added: “We’ve got to take it one game at a time. Last week we dominated the game from start to finish and didn’t get our rewards, but ultimately the performance was good so I was quite relaxed. We probably played better last week than we did today and yet this time we scored three goals.

"That’s football, but we’ve got a week ahead of us now where we’ll get the boys in on Tuesday and Thursday to tidy up in one or two areas of our game and go into the Kidlington game in front of our own fans and hopefully again in front of a good crowd.”