Hi Nigel, a poor game from the start today…
Yeah,, very poor. Poor start, poor result. We knew what to expect from them and we didn’t deal with it. Similar problems cropping up again isn’t it.
You seem to have an issue at full-back with not knowing what your best choice is or not having strong options
It was a wing-back today.
I know where we need to strengthen moving forward and one of the problems is everybody will always think that the players that aren’t playing are always the solution. I hear a lot about George [Tanner], he’s still learning the game, it’d be a lot for him to come in and deal with that situation. We need to strengthen, absolutely, but the problem is that we have too many players that can’t put back-to-back performances together and that’s a big problem for us.
Any reason for the slow start, could you see it coming?
I couldn’t give you an answer why players freeze, I can’t answer for that.
Freeze is the right word isn’t it?
Yeah, not good enough. We have to waste substitutions for players that aren’t at it, it happened last week at Forest, we make changes and we were poor today, really poor. I don’t say that very often.
You don’t have to.
Very, very poor.
Does it have to be a busy summer in the transfer market?
There needs to be changes, there’s no doubt about that. Some will be around necessity, and some will be around whether we can or can’t do them. I can’t give you a definitive answer to them because I’ve already stated that I’ll make changes if they’re going to significantly improve what we’ve got but if we can’t do that, I won’t make changes. It’s quite simple.
It’s clear that we need to but whether we’re able to is another thing.
When you got your goal back it looked like you were going to get into the game but it didn’t happen for your attackers
I thought Antoine [Semenyo] did great, he’s been ill for the last two days so for him we only expected him to last 60 minutes but through necessity he stayed on and that shows you what he’s made of.
Bad day for us.
Is there only so much you can do when it comes to defending set-pieces?
It was Antoine’s problem, his man. If players have a job to do and don’t do it, simple. Man-to-man, don’t let your man score. But it happens too often with us.
Is that about players taking responsibility?
That’s your decision. It’s my responsibility, I’m the manager, but we got what we got.
How important is it for Sam Bell to not dwell on that performance?
Sam’s got nothing to be worried about, I took him off to protect him because his teammates didn’t protect him. Sam did alright but he didn’t get a lot of help did he?
I said to him at half-time it was no reflection on him. Rather than say that the young lad didn’t play well, I didn’t think he had any help.
So you would consider keeping him in that position?
Yeah, he’s really good at it, very creative. We were playing against a team playing the same way, he needed to look after his man but unfortunately he had to do more because the players alongside him didn’t do their job.
He’s always looks good going forward…
Yeah, well that’s what wing-backs are. We don’t have wing-backs within the football club really.
What’s the position with Danny Simpson at the minute?
I’m not considering him at the moment?
You brought him in during the summer and he can play right-back, what’s gone wrong there?
I’m looking at who’s going to be here next year. I don’t intend on making short term decisions for us at the moment. I make decisions which I think are right to the team and that’s whether players are included or not in the matchday squad or whether they start or don’t start.
With the second-half performance, you must be wondering why you couldn’t do that all game?
I don’t wonder why, it’s happened too many times this year let’s be honest. For me it’s one of those where I’ve already said that we don’t have enough players that can put back-to-back performances in and normally with a squad you’ve got four, five or six players within your matchday team that you think you can get 7/10 with each week, we don’t have that.
We might have one or two and that’s a problem for us. In terms of how the squad develops moving forward is going to be based on getting players that are able to do that, whether they’re outstanding players or limited players, it’s how you construct squads.
You need match-winners of course, when you look at us at the end we had Andi [Weimann] at wing-back, Antoine, Nahki [Wells], Chris [Martin] is still on there, we’ve got plenty of attacking players there but we’re not reliable at the back, that’s the problem for us.
That’s been a similar scenario to the last few weeks…
Yeah, you don’t concede as many goals as we do and know that you’re a decent defensive side. I’m reluctant of going down the route of looking to put together or field a team that’s got a reasonable chance of being hard to beat and lose out on creativity. I don’t think we can do it anyway.
Was Rob Atkinson’s performance off the bench a positive?
Well, how many times have I said that as players that have gone on as a sub?
If it’s a positive, fine, I know he’s been out injured but this is the problem, the solutions are always players who aren’t playing and you pick them and they’re not the solution anymore. This is our problem.
Inconsistency as a team and a lack of personal drive for a few of our players too which is a problem for us.
When you’ve conceded a lot of goals it’s usually more than just the defence so do you think that it’s right in midfield?
Of course it is.
So you need a defensive midfielder?
Yeah, well we don’t really have any at the football club. We don’t have any.
Is it fair to say that Alex Scott has been a consistent player?
Yeah, but when you’re relying on 18-year-olds to be your consistent player that tells you where we are. When I say that, what I recognise is that our youngsters are in there playing well, performing for us based on pure merit, not in there as a promotional story for our academy. We are lucky that we’ve got players come through our academy and play very well for us in the first team but we are inconsistent and we remain our biggest enemy.
We are our own enemy.
Birmingham have got some good players by the way, I don’t buy into the, ‘you should be beating sides like that’, I think we should but you can’t give two goals away and expect to win games because that’s what we did today, we were wasteful, we only react when we put ourselves in a bad situation.
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