Joey, lots of positives in recent weeks but you still warned us there would be ups and downs. Was tonight one of those downs?
Yeah. Strange performance from the lads today.
No indication of that in recent weeks, they’ve been superb but we’re really disappointed. We’re disappointed across the board.
People have been given opportunities with a few changes tonight. As a manager, you make changes and sometimes you’re a genius and sometimes you’re not. Tonight is one of those days for me. We’ve got to be better.
It was a bad start, even before kick-off. Connor Taylor, was that an illness that stopped him from starting the game?
He just had a weird rhythm in his heart, which he had in the Rochdale game when it made it come off.
It’s something to do with the heart. He’s absolutely fine now. His dad was in the stand.
It’s not ideal when you’re about to warm-up and you’ve named a team, but that is football. No excuse, we’ve got to be focused.
Thankfully, he’s absolutely fine, but that doesn’t take away from us not being good enough tonight.
Conceding in the first 60 seconds certainly didn’t help matters…
No, never does. You know you’re coming to a side that is fighting for its life. They had a good late win on Saturday and the last thing you want to do is give them a leg up.
For us tonight, we’ve given them the perfect start and at that point we had a mountain to climb.
We didn’t deserve anything out of the game tonight.
I thought we should have had at least one penalty, if not two in the first period. There is definitely a handball in the box and Harvey Saunders, I felt, was barged in the back by their lad, but it was the linesman our side who actually missed their goal being about three or four yards over the line in the second half.
He wants to get himself down to Specsavers, that geezer, if he wants to have a career as a lino.
But again, if we’d have got anything out of the game tonight, we’d have been fortunate.
Oldham were better than us and we need to be better on Saturday in our stadium.
Is it a case of dusting yourself off and putting it down to a bad night at the office?
I wish it was that simple. We’re disappointed in there but, unfortunately for us, we can’t do anything about that right now. The lads are hurting in there.
Antony Evans coming off early in the game, Connor going down, two lads who have been really big players for us, so it does throw you a little bit but we’ve got more than enough quality to play better than that and we didn’t.
Was Antony’s injury something from Saturday or was it a knock that he picked up tonight?
He was touch and go. I spoke with the guys and he had a bit of tightness in his hamstring.
He felt absolutely fine this morning and wanted to play but as you can see within 10 or 15 minutes he wasn’t quite right.
I think Sam Finley looked like he was carrying a little bit of something there as well.
For me, you can’t risk the young players. I said to Antony in there ‘If you’re not 100 per cent, once you cross that white line, unfortunately, to everybody else you are.
It’s part of his development and learning, but once we saw him limping, we can’t risk him being out for six or seven weeks at this point, so as a precautionary measure we took him off the pitch.
But again, it was Murphy’s Law where everything that can go wrong seems to go wrong, apart from their goal that was ruled out, which looked like it hit the bar and went in for me.
We just weren’t good enough and I’m disappointed because the Gasheads have turned up again today.
We kept huffing and puffing, but we didn’t deserve anything out of the game today.
Presumably, Sam Nicholson’s goal before half time should have given you a bit more energy going into the second half, but it didn’t really happen…
No, so you go away and you look at you’re processes. We have done absolutely everything, trained, travelled exactly as you’d want for Premier League level, but we’ve just turned up and been National League level in terms of performance.
Nowhere near good enough. It’s a setback and we’ve got to respond correctly against an in-form Mansfield in our stadium on Saturday.
Elliot Anderson started. How do you think he did tonight?
I thought he did alright. There were some bright spells.
It was tricky for him based on some of the more senior players around him and their levels of performance.
The fact we’re one goal down after less than two minutes doesn’t really help matters, but I was really pleased with him.
I thought he showed bravery, he got on the ball at the right times and he’s going to be a helluva player. He’s only 19 and there will be a lot of better nights for him tonight.
We mentioned one or two injuries. Josh Grant didn’t feature tonight, what’s the issue there?
We’ve just got to manage his load. He had a bit of patellar tendinitis after playing on a relatively hard surface on Saturday and at this moment he can’t really go Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, so we are trying to build that into him.
We’ve got to be mindful with his minutes and his load, but we really missed Josh tonight.
I think this is the first of six Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, so it is a positive that you can get back on the horse quickly…
Yeah, we’ve got that coming up. There’s lots to play for, loads of games for us.
We’ve been on a decent run of late whilst I haven’t felt we’ve played phenomenally well.
We’ve just got to keep chipping away. Tonight, we were nowhere near at the level we want to be at and if you’re not at the level you want to be at, you get your backside handed to you in this division.
The teams are so closely matched that if you’ve got one or two off it – and I think we had at least nine or 10 off it tonight – you won’t get anything out of the game of football.
Joey, you had something like 75 per cent of the ball. A couple of players in particular seemed to have real trouble progressing it tonight. Why do you think you didn’t create anywhere near as much as you would like with that much possession?
We felt we could come though the middle of them. If you remember the Oldham game earlier in the season, Harvey Saunders and Aaron Collins caused them real problems, certainly the two centre-halves in terms of running in behind them.
We felt they were going to come out of the traps and it was going to be a bit more of a physical contest, so we went with a diamond in the middle of the park to try to come through the central platforms where we’ve been using wider players in recent weeks due to the load and freshness.
Sammy Nicholson’s had an impact injury so he had a bit of swelling around his knee, not in it but around the joint. I just felt with the schedule of games coming up it was an opportunity for people who have been chomping for opportunities.
Some of them did OK, but I don’t think anybody’s coming out of that game with glowing reports.
Maybe a little bit of smoke and positivity they’ve had has gone to a few of their heads and that is a reality check and straight back down to earth for a few.
Talk me through the first goal and what happened there. It seemed like Nick didn’t get a full clearance on it and then Cian didn’t quite get the interception. In the first minute of a game, you do need to be more solid than that…
For sure. I haven’t seen it back but it looks like a ball that should be cleared, certainly we’ve had a couple of swipes at it and we haven’t cleared our lines.
The kid gets in and hits it early and it’s a helluva finish. Sometimes you’ve just got to give him credit.
He’s taken it early and big Anssi hasn’t had a chance and before we know it lost a starting player in the warm-up and we’re 1-0 down.
You’re shell-shocked a little bit and we compound that by giving away a soft goal from a corner.
We get ourselves back in it but don’t kick on.
I’ll go away and analyse all those situations and as calmly and composed as we can on Thursday, we’ll try to learn lessons from it, but we’ve got put a line through tonight.
As disappointing as it is, we’ve got to put a line through it and we’ve got to get back on the horse very quickly because we’ve got the division’s in-form side in our stadium on Saturday.
Second goal, was it just you lost first and second contact from the corner?
Yeah, and it’s disappointing because it was a huge part of the build-up. We highlighted Piergianni’s threat from set plays.
He does get a lot of first contacts and we had to be ready for the secondary phase, and we just haven’t defended it well enough.
Disappointing and we’ve got to be better.
James Connolly came out of your initial XI. Cian Harries came in for him. What was the thinking behind that decision because you’ve been very complimentary about James in his first few starts?
He had a bit of a stiff glut and we felt they were going to drop off in the way they did and you can get passing platforms from the outside and rotation of bodies.
James has come in and he’s played a load of games on the spin having not really played any senior football.
Cian has quality. He lost his place in the team in the Hartlepool game even though we won.
Tactically, we felt it was there, but after 55 seconds or whatever it was, the game plan was out of the window because we were a goal behind.
For me, it’s a huge learning curve in terms of the professionalism I expect. When I played, if you weren’t in the team you had to be wired in because you could be on at any minute and with the lads we’ve got, if they’re not in the team they’re disappointed.
That fosters into them, maybe letting that affect their performance.
Top players understand that if they are needed for a minute, they are wired in and ready for it.
I just felt right across the board, we were nowhere near good enough.
Players trying to play with knocks and niggles, which isn’t ideal but I commend them for wanting to put the jersey on and get out there.
But if you’re not 100 per cent fit or right to do the job to the best of your ability, you’re actually hurting your own team.
It’s all good and well being brave and wanting to play, but if you’re not right – and we had a few out there who are clearly not quite right, but are saying they want to play which I love about them – but it’s hurt us tonight.
It’s cost us and we’ve dropped a game that we were expected to win, but credit to Oldham. They are fighting for their very existence in the division and Shez has given them a bit of an uptick and they deserved to beat us tonight.
What’s the early prognosis with Antony? Is he going to play at the weekend?
I don’t know. I wouldn’t know until we assess him.
He hasn’t done anything other than look like he was really stiff and about to pull something.
He wasn’t moving right and in the build-up he was touch and go up until about 11am today.
It’s part of his learning. If you’re not right, there are no Supermen out here. There were men who were fit that could have gone in from the start.
Compounded with losing big Connor, who’s been a huge part of our recent success.
We’ll have better days. That was a poor day and I’m just gutted for the fans who have travelled up.
My little lad was here for the first time and he’s going to be telling me how bad we were for the next 24-48 hours.
It’s not ideal but we’ll be back stronger. The team is still in the evolutionary stage, there are going to be some ups and downs.
I still think we’ve got a real strong core belief, but it’s definitely points dropped here today.
On a more positive note, I thought your goalkeeper was absolutely outstanding and showed just why he is an internationally-recognised goalkeeper. He kept you in the game even when you weren’t at your best.
Yeah, and I’m disappointed for Anssi because he’s been superb but we keep shipping goals.
He’ll be angry in there. We’ve got a young backline, I get that and obviously we’ve lost the big mainstay of it. Connor has been such an important part of it.
But we’ll get back on the horse and get after it. It’s not final, there are lots of games to go.
We’ve certainly progressed in recent weeks but never did I think at any moment we were the finished article. I still think there’s lots to come.
I was saying to you on Saturday I was still thinking we were at three and fours out of 10. Today, we were probably minus four, but we’ll be back stronger.
Lads are disappointed in there and they will want to give a good account of themselves in front of, hopefully, a packed house at the Mem on Saturday.
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