Still: System didn’t work against Rovers

In his pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday’s League Two trip to Yeovil he described the performance at home to Bristol Rovers on Tuesday as ‘worse than poor’ and admitted the system that had been effective in previous games hadn’t worked.

But he cautioned against too much early concern as the team grows into the season.

He said about Tuesday’s 1-0 defeat to an injury time goal: “Poor might have been a kind word. It was worse than poor.

“It is the same group of players who, for an hour of Saturday played well against a decent side, and that played well against Bristol City.

“We didnt have enough players who played to the expectation we thought they would.

“The system we played worked well against Bristol City and served us reasonably well in the Oxford game, but if I’m being honest it didnt serve us well on Tuesday.

“Having done enough to put Saturday’s game out of sight early, I thought it was right to continue and see where it could take us.

“City play from a higher level, the Championship, and it worked well.

“We played it against Oxford and they changed their shape so we thought this might be working.

“I just felt it is important at this stage of the season to see exactly what you can and can’t do and I don’t think this worked. That’s not the reason we lost, but possibly the reason we didn’t get as high attacking wise up the pitch as we should.

“Other than probably the three centre halfs not too may people played well but in fairness to the centre forwards there wasn’t any supply. There was no real supply to the front people. which was very unfair on Craig and Paul.

“I have to look at that and we know this is a good system against maybe a team that will have a lot more of the ball, a higher level team, but we’re not sure it’s right against some other teams.

“We had scored three against Bristol City and two against Oxford so I was as surprised as most people.”

He was honest about Tuesday and was keen for improvements, although it could take several more games for the team to hit their stride: “Was I disappointed with Tuesday, yes. Was I expecting to see better individual performances, yes.

“Would I expect to improve on that 100 per cent, yes. Would I expect us to be at our best until 6 8 9 games are play, no, but I expect to see progress.”