United’s opening two fixtures could easily have reaped more than the point currently on the board had better use been made of the possession in the final third, with the team showing overall that they have more than enough to handle the step up once that final ingredient is mixed in.
“We’ve got to keep going and working at it, we can’t do anything else,” manager Paul Simpson told us. “We don’t have anyone else, this is what we’ve got at this moment in time, so we have to keep working on it.
“We need to make sure it has a bit of meaning to it when we do get forward. I thought in the first half we had a lot of good situations, but we were half-hearted too much, we didn’t go through with it with conviction, whether it be a shot, a cross, a run, we just seemed to be a little bit tentative.
“Maybe that’s understandable because we are just finding our feet as a group together, and also in the league. You’ve just got to keep working away and hoping that you can change it very quickly.
“We’re getting forward well, I just don’t think we fully committed to it, I don’t think we went the full hog and really went for it. I thought we were a bit tentative.
“Maybe that’s human nature, maybe that’s what happens when you’re just wanting that first victory. Because we’re like the supporters, we want it as much as they do.
“Maybe that’s what it is, I don’t really know, but we’ve got to get over it, we’ve got to go gung ho, have a go, try and get ourselves goals, get bodies into the box to go and get it. We need to be turning good things into points won.”
“I’ve said before, I think we have the players here who can do it,” he added. “I do have faith, yeah. And I hope that doesn’t change. There’s only so long you can keep waiting, but I can assure everybody we are desperately trying to bring more players into this football club.
“It’s not easy. It’s not something that you can just pick a phone up and say I want him, and it happens. It’s really, really difficult, and I see it up and down the country, and speak to other managers and coaches.
“Everybody’s in the same boat, we’re all looking for that player who’s a bit different, it just hasn’t happened yet.”
The pair who started on Saturday worked themselves into the ground as they waited for that clear-cut opening.
“Edmo has got all of the tools in his locker to do it, I’ve said that before,” the gaffer said. “I just felt this was a day where Luke Plange needed to come out of it to have a look.
“He’s had two games where he’s worked really hard and he’s been a little bit unfortunate not to get on the end of things and for things not to happen for him.
“We felt as though we needed to change it a bit, which is why we went with Edmo and Gibbo. We had to shuffle it around a little bit and I thought Taylor Charters came in and did a good job for us. Overall I thought the team did a good job, but it just wasn’t enough.
“And I think Jordan Gibson’s done really well so far. I’m playing him probably out of his favourite position, primarily because over pre-season we didn’t have enough strikers in the building, but he showed he’s got something about him, he’s lively.
“I thought he did ok. It was a case of trying something different. I felt as though Luke’s had two really hard-working performances without anything really dropping for him, I thought it might do him good just to sit out and watch, and be ready to come and have an opportunity.
“Luke’s a good finisher, Gibbo can get goals for us, Edmo can, Joe Garner can, we’ve got players, probably not 25 a season, but we’ve got to get them all chipping in. We need goals from wherever we can get them at the moment just to give us that little jump.”