On the defeat

It was very harsh, I just said to the lads, and I said to the supporters, that at the beginning of the season, this year was always going to be a learning curve and they’re learning the hard way.

You probably can’t get two more contrasting teams; they had a group of men, we had a group of kids. We finished the game with our oldest player being 27.

But I thought the performance was excellent. We had a game plan to frustrate them in the first half, slow the game down, and I just told the boys to play football.

That’s what I said to them at half-time as well, I told them they had gone away from what we had planned to do. We were supposed to move the ball quickly and knock it about.

They made changes, they had to make changes, the big lad, (Liam Hughes) has come on and done what he’s good at.

On the goals conceaded?

The first goal is really frustrating  first of all, we should have cleared it better, and then you can’t let the big man have three touches in our box. But I thought our response was outstanding we created chance after chance.

It came down to decision-making, and that’s been our season in a nutshell. In both boxes, we should have scored more goals, and we should have defended better.

We equalised, but then they came back with a great header, and the third goal came from a mistake.

I’ve analysed the game with the lads, and they’ve done everything I asked, especially in the second half, which I thought was tremendous. But two mistakes in our box, two mistakes in theirs and that’s football, unfortunately.

On being braver on the ball

I told the lads, if we try to battle against them, we haven’t got a chance. I thought we defended well at times, but this is a tough place to come. I kept telling them to believe in themselves, In the second half, they stuck to the plan and we sucked them in to go long and then played through their press.

If we had scored that second goal when we were on top, I think we would have gone on to win the game.

On  the current state of the injuries

Shaq came off with a dead leg. You could see he wasn’t himself. Lewis Thompson is going to be out for another three or four weeks.

You look at their bench, and I don’t even want to think about how much money they had sitting there.

We had a young academy lad as our substitute goalkeeper, young Frankie on loan from Halifax, and Ayo and Brad coming back from injury. So yes, we are a bit short, but it is what it is.

You have to look at the resources we have as a club, decisions need to be made, we’re just trying to stick at it.

Is the focus now shifting towards next season?

No, I don’t want to do that. I want to finish as high as possible. We knew this game today wasn’t going to define our season it was always going to be a tough one. Last week was disappointing, but we need to finish strong.

Why can’t we go on a run and get sixth place like we have in the last two seasons? Let’s give the supporters something to cheer about, get some wins on the board. The lads need to start believing in themselves.

We’ve been saying it from day one there are some good players out there. Are they tired? Yes, they probably are.

A lot of them have never played this much football before. But we’ll stick together, and we’ll keep pushing.