Joey, that must have been a difficult watch for you this afternoon?
Yeah, very much so. Probably the worst 60-70-minute performance, if not 90-minute performance, since I’ve been here. It was really poor and I can only apologise to the fans have paid their hard-earned cash and given up their time on Saturday to follow us here.
That is not acceptable and all you can do is apologise to the (the fans). It was embarrassing, actually.
It was one of those where there hasn’t really been a sign of a performance like that. What went wrong today?
I think everything. Even look at Scotty Sinclair, normally so dependable there. It was one of those days.
It felt like we were getting a bit of luck, certainly when they hit the post in the first half and went in at 1-0. We had the ball but we didn’t really create an abundance of chances. It was just not good enough across the board.
I could pull out of that Jarell. For a 19-year-old, I think we’ve got another really good prospect there. It will get lost in the result and what’s gone on around it, but you can see today he is an absolute quality addition.
The rest of the lads in the team need to pull round and give him some better support because it was like they were making their debuts today rather than him. He was the most assured player on the pitch, apart from Scotty Sinclair. I thought Scott was a real bright spark for us.
But there are certainly a few lads there who will be disappointed with their performance and their application today.
When the two goals go in after half time, it throws away whatever you were hoping to do after the break.
Yeah, we just challenged the lads. We said ‘We’re in the game, we’ve had plenty of the ball in the first half. We need to do a couple of things differently’.
Before you know it, we concede from a wide free-kick, which is embarrassing. The first goal, the keeper should do better, absolutely, but he shouldn’t have been allowed to get inside and have a shot.
The two lads in midfield there have done well for us and they are meant to have a lot of experience, but the second goal, Sam loses his runner at the back post. Obviously, Beefy scores an own goal but it should have been dealt with and it’s a moment of indiscipline from your senior players. You expect the mistakes and those decisions to be made from lads who are 19 and making their league debut, not lads who are a few hundred games into their careers and in their 30s.
A really poor performance, but we have added a couple of players to our team. I know Ellery will get a bit of heat and you hear the fans singing ‘Belshaw’. It’s not his fault that has happened; the team in front of him can do a lot better to defend his goal.
The save he makes after the first goal from the lad closing in is an excellent save. Yeah, he’ll probably be disappointed with goals five and one, but the three in the middle he has got no chance due to the madness of our defensive structure at the minute.
Three or four days to go in the window and we need to bring in four or five players if we want to try to get promoted. For us, you have got to beat these teams. We have been excellent beating Cheltenham away and Cambridge away, but we lose here comfortably today and we lose at Accrington last week. If you want to get promoted, you can’t drop points there for me.
You mentioned the new signings you would like to bring in. Anything moving closer from Thursday?
No, but I will definitely be chasing everything up as soon as I get away from this because if anyone was in any doubt, today has been another rude awakening about where the standard of our group’s at, and if we don’t improve it, we will no longer be able to keep pace with the teams that are chasing promotion.
And just a word for the fans. I think for 600-plus to come on a January afternoon is a great effort and it was unfortunately not what you wanted to give them.
No, and if I had my way, I’d make the players pay for their tickets and their travel because that was an embarrassing performance from our players.
Do they deserve to be paid? I wouldn’t pay you if you turned up and did a job in my house and did it to the standard of some of our boys today. I’d be chucking you out of the house and never allowing you back in and you certainly wouldn’t be getting a pound note off me.
But that’s the beauty of football, isn’t it? The lads get paid regardless. They have got the PFA and all that to protect them for those reasons, but based on output, I wouldn’t have paid some of our lads the money they are getting paid for that performance because it was unacceptable.
Joey, naturally you would say after conceding five goals that the defence is the problem, but that was lost in midfield, wasn’t it? It seemed like Crowley played off the back of your midfield two all day and it never adjusted.
Yeah, and they should be our most experienced players in there. I think it is a team issue.
We’ll have to go and pick the bones out of it and I don’t want to out them and say too much in the Bristol Post before I’ve had chance to go over it with a fine-tooth comb, but from the goals I have seen there, the first goal, Couttsy can’t let him back inside and when he does let him back inside, he has a free shot from 20 or 30 yards.
Yeah, the keeper could save it, absolutely. It just catches a bounce in front of him, but he shouldn’t have been allowed to get inside and have the shot.
I speak to the lads about it all the time, but if the lads don’t take on board what you’re offering on a matchday then you’re in a lap of the gods.
When they do it their way, they are not successful. When they do it my way, they are successful.
We need to upgrade that part of the team, that’s why Grant has come in and I will be trying to get another midfielder in before the window closes because, based on their performance today, they are not going to be capable of getting us where we need to go.
The last thing you will want of this season after such a brilliant run is for it to peter out and you will worry you are losing touch…
Yeah, I’ll level with you, Sam. I’m looking to get to 52 points ASAP and I’ve said that to you all season.
We were in a strong position; we’ve lost two centre-halves from our team when you factor in Lewis Gibson, and then Jordan Rossiter. You’ve seen today that they are massive losses for a club of our size.
First year in this division, you need a bit of luck and everybody to stay fit and we could have maybe kept pace with that group. As it is, as soon as they come out of the team, you see the dip in quality.
We didn’t have the legs and energy in there and that is why we have recruited where we have recruited. We have got a bit more to do to put some more legs in there and we’ll be fine.
But the thing that is going to annoy me is we are going to lose the opportunity to get promoted by dropping points at these types of places. You’ve got to win here.
As you pointed out, I thought Jarell looked like an outstanding footballer, so elegant on the ball. It is bizarre to say that with five goals against your team, but if you get the structure around him right, it looks like you’ve got one.
We just need another seven of them and we’ll be in business. He’s a top player.
Bobby (Thomas) was effective for us and in both boxes he was aggressive and he did a good job here, but when he decided to go it’s tricky in terms of you’re not expecting it and it came quite late.
But for us to be able to recruit a player of Jarell’s quality is massive. We’ve hit the bar on another couple this week who are the same echelons as that and that is frustrating.
But we’ve still got a bit of wiggle room and time in the market and hopefully, we can add three or four because if we do, it will give us the impetus to finish the second half of the season strongly.
I thought Grant (Ward) was good and I thought Jarell was outstanding considering he was making his debut today. It sounds mad saying that because we shipped five, but you couldn’t put any of them at Jarell’s door. He was really competent.
As a group, we must be better. That’s not good enough.
Do you envisage any more departures by Tuesday?
Yeah, a couple I’ve made my mind up on today that we need to move on out of the football club. They are just not going to do what I need them to do.
I’ve given them ample opportunity. I’ve said to them in there ‘I’ve given you loads of opportunities to have a jersey, keep your jersey and take it’.
Now I’ve got to be ruthless because I’m looking at next season and what that looks like as well as trying to finish this season strongly. You’ve got to have one mind on the job to come.
This season was stabilising, keeping the team in the league, being a League One side consistently and trying to build the foundations to kick on.
Because we started slow, you would have snapped your hand off for the position in the December period and we got in a bit of rarefied air up in eighth in the table. I think a few of our lads have thought that’s it, job done and we can relax.
The last two games at Accy and at Morecambe, we’ve been poor.
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