BOSS Tommy Widdrington has fired a shape up or ship out warning to any King’s Lynn players “who have their own ideas about the way the game should be played”.
Widdrington has more than doubled the Norfolk club’s points tally from fewer games than had been played prior to his arrival in December but the gap to National League safety has still grown to a chasm.
Opportunity knocked last Saturday with a shock 2-0 lead at promotion-chasing Solihull Moors but it ended 2-2 and was followed by Tuesday’s 0-0 stalemate with managerless Woking.
And while many might have deemed the Solihull result as a positive, Widdrington bemoaned an all-too-familiar Achilles heel in his post-match address.
“There is an inherent thing at this football club, they all think they are five-a-side players and that is the problem,” he said.
“They are brilliant on an astroturf, they are brilliant in five-a-side games but when you put them on a bigger pitch some just don’t want to put the ball into areas and, quite frankly, they need to.
“If they don’t they are not going to play, simple as that. We are not good enough to pass our way through the opposition.
That was proven in the first half of the season so we have to do something different.
“If people don’t get on board with it they can go. I don’t give a monkey’s how long they have been here, there are certain people at this club who have their own ideas about the way the game should be played and they have to get on board or get off.”
Widdrington also acknowledged his Linnets players needed to be “fitter” and “better”.
“I am not having a go at my coaching staff there, it is inherent,” he added.
“It is what they have in the can from the start of the season and some of them don’t have a lot left.
“Yesterday I asked the group how many of them had played 30 games in a row at this level and there were four. I think we have a lot of lads running on empty and possibly one or two slightly above the level they should be at.”
