SIMON Anderson says he needs to see progression on the ice from his Oxford City Stars side, to match the financial input off it.
Stars sit second from bottom in NIHL Division 1 South after their double-header loss to Solent Devils and Streatham Redhawks over the weekend.
Speaking after the latter defeat, a 7-2 loss at Oxpens, head coach Anderson told this newspaper: “We’ve spent a bit more money on the team this year, so it’s got to be better than last year, and right now it’s not.
“We’ve just got to keep working on it. It’s a project, but the club’s put in more and more money into it each year, so you do need to see a bit of progression.”
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Stars were beaten 4-3 at Solent on Saturday in overtime, but were blown away by Streatham in the first period the following day.
The hosts spurned three attempts during a two-minute penalty for JJ Pitchley, and were punished when Luke Brittle gave Streatham the lead almost immediately after the penalty period came to an end.
The advantage was doubled while Marcus Mitchell was in the penalty box, as Josh Ealey-Newman scored on the power play.
Brittle added a third goal, while a classy effort from Tomasz Skokan made it 4-0 with just 0.1 seconds left on the clock in the opening period.
Ben Paynter scored the fifth for Streatham while both Mitchell and Ealey-Newman were off for fighting, and Stars then pulled one back through Tom Ravenscroft on the power play.
Ethan Lane fired in from a central area on his Streatham debut, and although Bailey Hind-Pitcher reduced the arrears in the third period, Lane struck again with three minutes to go.
Anderson said: “Streatham are a very good team. We beat them last time, so they were always going to be well up for it, and then they lost to Invicta [Dynamos] last week and got shutout, so they were always going to come in angry.
“You could see from the warm-up that they were ready to go, and we warned our guys about that for the first period.
“I thought in the first period we were okay, and it was towards the end we conceded them two late goals and that took the game away from us a little bit.
“If you give teams a three or four-goal lead in this league, then it’s tough. But we got better as the game went on and after that period, it was only a 3-2 game, so we were well in it.
“The ruthlessness in front of goal is killing us and has been since the start of the season. It’s something we’ve got to keep working on and eventually we’ll get the rewards from it.”
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