Nigel, much hard work undone again right at the end, you must have been pleased until then?
Yeah, I thought we worked hard and some of our frailties from the other night weren’t there, we worked hard, we were resilient in a tough weather day where it wasn’t easy. West Brom didn’t really allow us too much room in the middle of the park so it was a scruffy old game but I thought we did okay.
Unfortunately it’s the same old problem, late goal, cost us two points. When you look at Luton in third tonight, we should have beaten them twice. They scored a late goal here, the swings are where the ability to keep things tight and make good decisions have cost us. They’ve cost us again today unfortunately, same players making the same mistakes.
Managers follow the build up much better than we do, but to my memory the ball was right up in their corner…
We had a throw in.
By their corner flag.
We had a throw in but the throw in is poor, at the end of the day you can’t make decisions for players and Livermore was offside by the way. For the goal, he was offside.
You can’t expect the officials to get you over the line quite frankly. Sometimes I might expect it the other way round but I don’t expect that.
Did you feel you had the rub of the two penalty decisions? One looked like a clear handball.
Again, I’m not going to go down the route of moaning about them, all the FA ever do then is come after me, rather than that I would prefer for the FA to do something about the quality of the refereeing.
Nothing to do with me, I’m not criticising the officials but I’m tired of reading emails from the MOAS team of the FA but I’ll let our darling FA deal with all that because they’re brilliant aren’t they?
The penalty they got, it looked like Dan [Bentley] came out and won the ball…
No, I’ve seen it from another angle and I can see why it was given. I’m not complaining about that at all. At the other end I thought one of them should have been a penalty, the other one I can see why it’s debatable but one is a penalty. If you don’t get them, you don’t get them.
At the end of the day we’ve been 2-1 up, with the ball, 10-yards from the end of the pitch and we’ve given them the opportunity to get an equaliser so I can’t really complain too much.
You say the same players are involved but you must show them, everybody watches games, do they not take it on board?
That’s up to you to make your decisions on that. I’m not going to talk too much about it because it’s the same, our fans must be sick and tired of hearing me talk about it and them moaning about us doing it, you make your own decisions about it.
How is Antoine Semenyo?
I don’t know at the moment but obviously he’s upset at the moment because he’s been called up for the Ghana squad and he’s jarred his knee so we’ll have to see how he is. I can’t give you anymore than that at the moment.
What you seem to have is a back three that were very good…
Well they did well today, they did well at Blackburn but they didn’t do too well at Barnsley, just talking about football and those three games in that way, the big thing for us has been our inconsistency.
We’ve been in winning positions, I think that’s our 50th goal of the season and we still needed three to win it and that’s been our problem this year. Consistency of performance defensively is about a collective mindset so yes, you need individuals and you need a unit of three centre backs if you play with three as we have done and I thought they looked pretty comfortable in all honesty. We conceded two goals though.
As a collective we’ve still got work to do. That’s where we are.
What did you make of Nahki Wells’ performance today?
I thought he did okay.
He looked pretty sharp considering he hasn’t played many games…
Well he should do, he should be nice and fresh shouldn’t he? What Nahki always has is an appetite to work and he wants to play and he’s had few opportunities so for him, when he gets it he wants to take it and he likes scoring goals.
Good for him, thought he did okay.
You said on Thursday that West Brom would be a big test for you from set pieces, you defended them really well today, is that something you’ve been working on?
Well obviously because we did a totally different system didn’t we? Or you probably didn’t notice, I don’t know.
There you go then. There’s no point in me telling you what the complete difference is, is there? If you’re reporting on it and you report that either we do things badly or we do things well and you don’t know what the difference is, I don’t need to tell you do I?
That’s not my job, that’s yours to look at what you look at.
When you see the replays you can see it but sometimes when it’s live it’s hard to spot…
I would say that that’s not a good observation on your part because it was totally different to anything we’ve ever done before.
There were plenty of good signs from the Barnsley game…
We couldn’t get any worse than that could we, let’s be honest. We were terrible and the players are aware of that. They’ve worked hard this week and they’re a good group of honest players so I never criticise that element of them, sometimes unfortunately we’ve just not been good enough.
That’s quite a hard thing to talk about, if you’re not good enough that’s something very different to application. Occasionally we’ve not applied ourselves in the way we should do but for the most part.
There was another goal and assist for Andi Weimann, he just keeps going, where does his energy come from because you can’t have expected the output he’s given you this season?
Oh no, I do.
It’s unprecedented, his figures this season have been the best of his career by far…
Goals-wise they have but off the ball is what he does everyday and he is a manager’s delight because whatever job you give him to do, he’ll do it. For instance when they changed their system in midfield and started splitting their midfield two into wider areas, Andi dropped in as a third midfield player and he works tirelessly for the team.
He still is astute enough and aware enough to get into good goalscoring situations. Our second goal was just a really good goal, it’s a simple goal but it’s a good ball from Robbie [Cundy], it’s a great header from Rob Atkinson and as a finish, wow, you’re not going to get much better than that but he’s done it week in week out.
For him, 18 goals this season is, when you consider where we are in the league and you’ve got a player that has scored 18 goals, it’s clear where we need to strengthen.
You said before the game that he was always going to change position from Blackburn when he was at wing-back, what was the thinking behind changing for home games and away games?
Because we’ve got our fans here.
I don’t really believe about us being on the backfoot. We’ve got to show some attacking intent. The fact that we’re not good at defending a lead or trying to find a scruffy 0-0, we haven’t got the players who can do that so It’s important to at least have attacking intent.
Today it was Antoine, Chrissy [Martin] and Andi, Nahki came on and we always looks dangerous and we always will look dangerous. We’ve got those types of players. One of the problems we’ve had is to keep things tight behind.
Jay Dasilva’s turned into as player who whichever position you ask him to play, either as a fullback or a wing-back on either side, he just does with a bit of class. He’s done well too.
We do have reliable players but when you consider how many players we’ve got in our squad who are experiencing their first Championship season, it’s tough for them to churn out a level of consistency which will get you over the line in games.
I was talking to staff today and you look at what Premier League football is like now, the gulf between the Championship and the Premier League has never been bigger. Likewise the gulf between the Championship and, to generalise because there are some really good League One sides, the gulf is getting bigger and it’s a problem for the game.
I still like to see sides that get promoted from the Championship to the Premier League do really well and I like to see that as I do sides that build on momentum with promotions from League One into the Championship.
It is a tough league to be consistently good in. There’s a few players who are a consistently not very good in it but that’s how it is.
Just one on Josh Owers, I saw his dad play which makes me feel old…
Yeah, well I played against him!
Is he a chip off the old block in terms of how he plays?
Yes and no is the best answer to give you because Josh is his own person. He’s football bright, he’s got a good football brain and what that does is allows where he’s not quite so good, in that he doesn’t have much pace, he’s got a good football brain.
We’ll see how far he goes but he’s a decent technician that’s for sure.
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