Attfield impressed with Klein

CROWS boss Paul Attfield says he has been impressed with Paul Klein’s performances since the teenager made the step up to the first team.

The 18-year-old winger has been a regular fixture for the reserves this season but his performances did enough to catch the eye of Attfield and earn a call up earlier on in March.

He made only his fifth appearance for the first team in Tuesday night’s 7-1 drubbing of Broxbourne Borough at Garden Walk – getting himself on the scoresheet with the final goal in the dying seconds to add to his strike against Colney Heath a fortnight ago.

His pace and trickery have certainly given his manager an added dimension and Attfield says he will only continue to improve.

“He’s given us some decent width as we’ve been playing quite narrow since Luke (Robins) left and Tommy (Malins) getting injured so we’ve been playing with a lot of bodies in the middle of the pitch but Paul is a very tricky player and he’s definitely getting better,” said Attfield.

“He’s been playing well in the reserves where I’ve seen him two or three times and he’s impressed me. He’s come in and played a couple of games and looks good.”

Attfield admits it’s not always easy promoting promising talent from the second-string and youth team as the standard of football is some way off that in the Premier Division.

However Klein’s competent performances on the wing in his handful of appearances so far may yet give added incentive to others in the ranks that they can push on and make the grade at the higher level.

“It’s a bit difficult (to bring in reserve players) because the standard of football in the reserves is quite a long way away from that of the first team so you really have to stand out to make the step up,” added Attfield.

“We’ve got some decent youngsters coming through in the youth set up but it’s a big step up to the first team, but Paul is just something a little bit different to what I’ve had available.”

Attfield was pleased with his side’s performance against Broxbourne and feels it was his players’ ability to utilise the extra space made available after both teams had a player sent off that enabled them to punish the visitors in the second half with six goals.

“In the first half there probably wasn’t much between the two sides,” he said.

“Both teams looked pretty decent on the counter attack but after the sending offs our formation obviously worked better for us and we took advantage of the extra space.

“We worked really hard for each other in the second half, although I’m not sure it was a 7-1 game but full credit, our finishing was very, very good.”

He also spoke briefly about the sending off of Ashley Grinham along with Broxbourne’s Bradley Drisdale following a 22-man brawl just before half time.

He added: “I couldn’t really see but it was a bad foul from their player and everybody just piled in after that. How you can pick just one player from each team to send off out of that I don’t know.

“Normally in those situations you get the same number of players sent off from both sides and very rarely do you get just one sent off.

“I’ll have a word with the ref about it and if Ash was involved then we’ll deal with it.”