A woeful Kings Langley performance saw them ship four goals inside 51 minutes as they slumped to a 4-2 defeat against Harrow Borough in their first home game of the season last night.

The hosts were chasing a lost cause from as early as the ninth minute when a free-kick just outside the box from full-back George Moore beat Garry Malone, although the keeper had seemed to have had it covered.

Callum Adebiyi’s attempt to reprise his last-minute goal of the previous match ran along the crossbar four minutes later, but it was a brief respite, as the red tide of Borough attacks finally bore fruit when Bayley Brown found it all too easy to cut in from the right and rifle home at the near post.

A shell-shocked Langley hung on grimly as the match entered the doldrums, with the only further incidents of note being saves from Malone and Hafed Al-Droubi from Lynton Goss and Mitchell Weiss respectively.

The second half was only two minutes old when Moore made progress down the wing, beat Adebiyi and fired an audacious shot into the far corner to effectively settle the match.

When Harrow’s other full-back, Ryan Haugh, placed an ordinary shot through defence and keeper, Kings looked to be heading for a rout, but to their credit they fought back to trouble the visiting defence for virtually the first time in the match.

An Alan Fleming shot was well held, Adebiyi and the newly-introduced Edu Toiny-Pendred had successive shots blocked by desperate defending, Dean Hitchcock’s effort was just past the post and an Arjun Jung header was saved.

Reward finally came in the 80th minute when a testing Jacob Cook corner glanced off the head of visiting skipper Ryan Moss to reduce the deficit, although it was of little consolation as a Kings player had still to get his name on the scoresheet.

At the other end, Harrow nearly restored the four-goal advantage, but a brave double block from Malone and then another from Jorell Johnson nullified the threat.

Weiss and Edu were now asking questions of the Harrow defence and it was from the former’s cross that a powerful header from Cook flew past the keeper to give the scoreline a semblance of respectability.

However, it could do little to lift the spirits of the home supporters and the fact that the sponsor felt unable to nominate a Kings Langley man-of-the-match probably summed up an unsettling evening.

Kings Langley: Malone; Cotter, Johnson, Tucker, Adebiyi; Cook, Jung, Hitchcock; Ward, Fleming, Weiss. Subs used: Toin-Pendred, Pobbe, Godfrey. Not used: Stobbs, Coldicott-Stevens.