“We had enough good chances to win it, but the finishing wasn’t good enough.”

Views from Joseph Lovett following Friday night’s 1-0 defeat at home against Rotherham United in League One: “A definite improvement on the previous games, but, a very frustrating game. Again, we lose because of playing out from the back. It’s starting to become like VAR, we moan about it every week. It’s the first time the crowd have been hugely deflated by a goal. It’s the same mistakes again and again. Teams know what’s coming and how to play against us, just press against us and we’ll deliver the ball to you on a plate. I think next season we’ll see a very different looking back 5 that is more adept at playing the way Appleton wants to play.

We had enough good chances to win it, but the finishing wasn’t good enough. There actually wasn’t an awful lot between the teams, though I’m not sure if that’s because Rotherham didn’t need to go through the gears. Rotherham must be the tallest team in the league, very physical and won all the second balls. Other than the goal, I can’t remember them carving us open.

We’re actually good when we have the ball forward, we just don’t have a successful method to get the ball in those positions. Passing out from the back has its clear issues and long ball provided limited success. The times we managed to get the ball out we looked good. In particular, the phase of play leading to Anderson’s opportunity was superb.

A massive positive today was Bridcut, what a fantastic addition he looks to be. I hope we can use him to bridge play from playing out at the back. He doesn’t half mind getting stuck in as well!

A couple of extra bug-bears:

– Too slow and predictable setting up from goal kicks and when Vickers had the ball in hand.
– Movement at throw-ins.
– Providing support when countering.
– Lack of fitness (at least compared to Rotherham).
– Lack of out and out winger options (we have bucket loads of central midfielders).

Hoping for a positive game on Tuesday and I feel confident we’ll get a good result. Let’s stop the rot of 4 defeats on the bounce, just for my peace of mind (I still have nightmares of our slide into Non-League). It’s difficult sometimes to remember we’ve had a lot of changes to the squad over a short period of time and it takes time for players to get on the same wavelength. Let’s cut out the problems at the back and we’ll be decent.

Onwards and upwards.”

More views from the Match Thread:

New gold dream: “Unfortunately that bit of luck is missing at the moment.