POPPIES goalkeeper Jason Harvell offered no complaints after the championship-chasers slumped to unexpected defeat at relegation-threatened Romsey.
The former Poole Town keeper felt “possibly a bit of complacency might have crept in” after the Victoria Park outfit had played so well when going down 2-1 at home to title favourites Dolphins in midweek.
Harvell, who saved an early penalty against Romsey, then conceded a couple of second-half strikes before Tom Jeffes grabbed a consolation for stunned Poppies.
The goalkeeper said: “It’s very disappointing. You can’t expect to beat teams like Romsey when so many of your players aren’t performing.
“You can get away with having two or three off the boil, but when you have got seven or eight not doing the business, you are not going to get a good result at Romsey because they did play very well.
“It’s very annoying, the fact we go out and perform well against teams like Poole but then can’t reproduce it against a side like Romsey. Possibly a bit of complacency set in among the squad.
“People were talking about there not being such a huge gap between Poole and other teams in terms of qualify and possibly being able to push them, but I don’t know.
“Maybe it was complacency because we did perform so well against Poole and couldn’t reproduce it at Romsey.”
Fourth-placed Poppies, who had been unbeaten in their opening nine league matches, missed out on the opportunity to close their four-point deficit on leaders Poole, who were held 1-1 by Thame in the FA Cup.
Poppies: Harvell, Arnold, Cole, Blake, Crutcher, Webb, Culliford, Phillipson-Masters, Kemble, Jeffes, Saadi. Used subs: Eriksen, Byrne, Richard. Unused subs: Rowley, Vaughan.
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