One of the bright spots in our defeat on penalties against Salford City yesterday was Erik Ring’s performance.
The Stacey West Patreon-sponsored winger has had a slow start to the season, coming in off the back of an injury. He described coming on against Plymouth as one of the worst days of his life, looking unfit.
He’s had to be patient, but his marauding run from inside his own half brought City’s only goal of the game. He beat a couple of defenders and slotted past the keeper, and as Michael Skubala explained, it is the culmination of a lot of hard work.
“Brilliant goal,” he told John Helm post-match. “He’s been working so hard in training.
“We went through a bad moment with Erik. He knows he wasn’t at level, but in training recently, he’s been absolutely at it. And I wanted to give him an opportunity to show what he could do again because I believe in Erik. I believe what he’s got. I believe what he can do.”
While Michael and the coaching staff get to see the ‘bad moments’, all we see is Saturday afternoon. Against Plymouth, Erik was way off it, but having spoken to him in pre-season, he seemed focused. Hopefully, other supporters have now seen that the ability he hinted at last season is still there.
“I think the fans saw that today,” Michael added. “We played him out there because we think he could get off the back of the left centre-half and beat him for pace and get behind him, and that’s where his goals come from, and it’s fantastic.
“But at 60 minutes, he’s tired a little bit, cramping up, so we have to make the change with a few of them. But yeah, it was a great goal.”
Indeed, Erik going off did seem to coincide with our attacking intent dwindling, although Salford’s changes also saw them getting at the game around the same time.
Either way, it was great to see Erik causing an attacking problem and looking more like the player that we signed a little over a year ago.
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