Below are some of the thoughts of Paul Carden after Tuesday night’s defeat to Leek Town.
“We’ve conceded two goals, poor for my liking. If you look at the goal on Saturday it was an unbelievable strike, last night they’ve been goals of our own making.”
“For all the ball we’ve had, we didn’t ask enough questions. Leek dropped off and actually played a bit like an away team, waiting to play on the counter attack and waiting for mistakes from us and it worked for them.”
“With a younger squad, those mistakes do happen, but it wasn’t just young players it was experienced players, trying to force balls through lines and getting cut out and we weren’t sensing that we need to play forward into the front quicker. In the last couple of games we’ve done that better but last night we didn’t and that’s where we’ve got to aim to find that consistent level of understanding and knowing that whatever the opposition is we find a way to win the game.
“In our last 4 games we’ve played a team in the league above, a side that finished play-offs last season, side that’s top of the league and another side that were in the play-offs. 1 defeat maybe doesn’t sound that bad but it was the fact we had a lot of the ball and not using it as well was massively disappointing.”
“The games are as hard as you make them. If you can’t deal with threats or the set-up of an opposition then every game’s going to be difficult. That’s where we need to be better and in play realise what state the game’s at and we need to have enough ability and composure about us to say ‘these are dropping off so when we get the ball can we get it forward sooner to stop them setting up’ in the block that they did.”
“We were too passive at times, passing for the sake of passing rather than with a purpose and that was our undoing.”