Following a disappointing 4-0 defeat away at West Didsbury & Chorlton Dave McNabb spoke to the club to give us his thoughts on the game.
Dave McNabb: “I think you’ve summed it up there. I think it’s a very, very tough day, possibly the darkest day I’ve had in management. From start to finish, we weren’t good enough. A lot of soul searching, a lot of questions to be asked following a game like that. Obviously, it’s very raw now, so it’s quite hard to put your finger on it. But, yes, I think it’s start to finish a disgrace. We’ve let people down today and massive apologies to the fans who’ve come here and for everyone who’s involved behind the scenes and put all the hard work in, because that’s just not good enough.”
Dave then spoke about the six changes made to todays starting 11 with him saying “Yes, we thought a lot about the selection today. We did a lot of work Thursday after training and a lot of conversations Friday. We questioned the shape a little bit, whether we were going to play a different shape today with the front two and lots of different things, lots of different ideas. Did we get it right or wrong? Probably hindsight maybe wrong, I don’t know. Ultimately, when you cross that white line as a player, you’ve got to be prepared to run and work hard. Today, collectively, we just didn’t do enough of it.”
He then told us about what the message was too the players at half time after going in 2-0 down, he said: “The message didn’t really change too much at half-time. I think what we said before the game, believe it or not, was that it was going to be a difficult pitch. It was going to rip up, don’t overplay and then we’ve gone from phase after phase of play, where we’re overplaying and we’re getting caught on it consistently. Players have decided to not take instructions on board and do what they want to do. If you’re going to do that, you need to make sure it works and it’s right. So, really disappointed. I think the two lads who came off were unlucky. It could have been any one of the 11 or any five of the 11 but the idea of the second half was to try and be a little bit more direct and try and play up the pitch because we’re trying to play the conditions. Again, we’ve defended poorly in the turnovers and conceded another two goals.”
Dave then spoke to us about today’s debutant Lewis Bryne who signed from fellow Premier Division side Chadderton with him saying “I think everyone knows what Lewis is about. I think, obviously, goals and being clinical on the top end. Today, we haven’t created chances. We’ve had one chance in the game. We had one opportunity to make the goalkeeper work and DJ sort of flicked it over the bar. Probably at a key time, we wouldn’t have deserved a goal, if I’m being honest but if we get that goal just before half-time, it’s 2-1. It’s a different game. Big moments change games. But we haven’t had any big moments today. I mean, standing here in front of you in front of other games where we’ve dropped points and played really well, and we’ve talked about the chances we’ve created and the shots we’ve had and possession stats. None of that was evident today, was it? We didn’t keep the ball. We didn’t play percentages well. We didn’t fight for it. We didn’t dominate the ball. We didn’t win second balls. We didn’t win our challenges in the air. Just a really, really poor day.”
He then spoke about the absences for todays game of Morgan Homson-Smith and Aaron Chalmers, he said: “Morgan’s got a small grade one thigh injury, so he’s probably looking for a week to two weeks. Aaron’s a little bit more unfortunate. He’s had a bit of an accident on New Year’s Eve with a firework. It’s resulted in a pretty severe burn, so it’s not going to be a quick one with Aaron, unfortunately. A massive, massive miss, especially on days like today. He’s the exact player that you want. He’s first name on the team sheet today. But you’re probably looking at maybe up to a couple of months, maybe a bit more, depending on how things go with him. So, a massive, massive loss for us and something we’re probably going to have to do something about.”
To finish the interview he then looked ahead to this Saturday’s return to Gigg Lane as we face FC Isle Of Man and what the plan is to right the wrongs of today, he said: “I think we probably need to address some of the wrongs from today, first and foremost, and go through some of the issues that we’ve experienced over the last few weeks, certainly defensively. But then once that’s done, we’ve got to move forward. This isn’t a bad side. We’ve not become a bad team overnight. We’re leaking too many goals; I think that’s evident. Today was something different, and we need to put that right. But we need to train properly next week, and we need to make sure we’re going into next Saturday with a completely different attitude, a completely different work ethic, because if we don’t, don’t be surprised if you see that again and that’s just not acceptable.”
