DARREN KELLY: Getting fans through gates is vital

It’s a strange scenario for us all at the moment - especially at Scarborough having no fans in for Tuesday’s FA Cup tie and then having to switch our next two home games to away from home.

I have to echo the statements of the chairman when he says that we can’t operate without getting our fans through the turnstiles - both financially and also from the point of view that football isn’t the same without them.

I don’t want to come across as I am making excuses at all here - but our supporters are huge for us and we definitely missed them on Tuesday night.

When the players need that push, our fans are usually the ones to give them that.

It was just strange, it just doesn’t feel right.

Having said that, we were very slow out of the blocks and Ashton were the better of the two sides for most of the first half.

We huffed and puffed and did improve in the second half, but we missed the few chances we created and it wasn’t to be our night.

These are challenging times - that’s for sure - and we need to stick together as a football club.

This is a great club and we need to make sure we roll our sleeves up and do everything we can to bounce back and that starts with our trip to FC United of Manchester on Saturday.

James Cadman and Ryan Whitley will come back in for Saturday, and we will have to wait and see on Michael Coulson.

It looked a bad one at first, but I spoke to him on Tuesday and he’s hopeful it might not be as bad as first feared.

We badly missed Coulo on Tuesday, that was evident.

As ever, I am being pro-active in looking to bring in players and that won’t change - but there is a dilemma at the moment in this challenging and uncertain environment as to if that is the right thing to do.

I have tried very hard to bring a striker in to the football club, but a lot of them want silly money or signing on fees and we’re just not in a position to offer that at present.

We’ll keep trying, I’ll keep talking to players and exploring our options.