Post by Matt Hallam on Aug 23, 2004 11:09:14 GMT
The more I think about the game yesterday the more I think that, on the whole, we are moving in the right direction. OK, we lost 0-5 but that was against very good opposition. When you compare it to last season, whenever we came up against a good team (and sometimes not even that good a team) we lost 0-8, 1-8, 1-8, 2-7, etc. So to lose only 0-5 is an improvement. All it takes is for us to cut out two of the sloppily conceded goals and you are down to a very respectable scoreline.
There are still things that we need to work on. As Craig spelled out, the last 15 minutes were unacceptable and we all have to take responsibility for that. I think we have to realise that there are going to be games next season were the opposition are going to be better than us and we need to keep our expectations realistic. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept defeat but if things don’t go our way and we find ourselves 2, 3 or 4 goals down, we have to make sure that we don’t self destruct and start arguing among ourselves. On the positive side though, this only happened right at the end of yesterday’s game, last season it would have been for the whole of the second half!!!!!
Finally, it didn’t help having to change the team around so much from the previous two weeks, even though this sounds like an excuse. Although both John and Mike had good games in the centre of midfield there wasn’t a lot of cohesion and I think this showed.
As I put in the match report defeats are not a bad thing. As long as we can identify what went wrong and try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again we can improve. However, everyone needs to MAKE these improvements happen and not just wait for them to happen.
There are still things that we need to work on. As Craig spelled out, the last 15 minutes were unacceptable and we all have to take responsibility for that. I think we have to realise that there are going to be games next season were the opposition are going to be better than us and we need to keep our expectations realistic. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept defeat but if things don’t go our way and we find ourselves 2, 3 or 4 goals down, we have to make sure that we don’t self destruct and start arguing among ourselves. On the positive side though, this only happened right at the end of yesterday’s game, last season it would have been for the whole of the second half!!!!!
Finally, it didn’t help having to change the team around so much from the previous two weeks, even though this sounds like an excuse. Although both John and Mike had good games in the centre of midfield there wasn’t a lot of cohesion and I think this showed.
As I put in the match report defeats are not a bad thing. As long as we can identify what went wrong and try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again we can improve. However, everyone needs to MAKE these improvements happen and not just wait for them to happen.
