They need to be cuddled rather than kicked

Last updated : 06 March 2006 By Tony Scholes

That was perhaps down to the serious injury to Leroy Lita, which has since been confirmed as a broken ankle, and it was this that Dillon spoke about first.

“Leroy had a shot and after he got his shot away he fell on the leg he’s damaged. You can tell by the reaction of the players that it didn’t look good and our physio signalled straight to the bench for a change. I think we have lost him for the rest of the season so it is very disappointing really.”

Speaking about the game Dillon added, “Convey has done that all season [referring to the first goal] and scored some great goals already. They are normally self created too, so often he starts the move off and finishes it too.

“We’ve scored quite a few set pieces this season and it was nice to score a second goal to make the lead a bit more comfortable. The Burnley lads tried hard today but we’ve got the best defensive record in the league.

“We didn’t realise Michael Ricketts was ill when we saw him at the hotel. But Steve Cotterill has lost his best player in Ade Akinbiyi and it is difficult when you haven’t got the strikers available. Fortunately we’ve got three, although it looks like we’ve lost one today.

“Our front men have scored something like 45 goals between them this season and you need that if you want to progress.”

Looking at the promotion hopes Dillon said, “We’ve got Watford next week and if we can beat them we are almost there. I think we might need another point.”

Steve Cotterill saw his side record a fourth successive defeat. “Of course, we are disappointed,” he said, “But I feel in the first half it was probably only a wonder goal that separated the teams.

“We are disappointed with the goals we conceded, but that happens when you have young lads in there and to be fair it isn’t the first time we’ve made a mistake with the shape of our team and a long ball and then a second ball have popped out to someone.

“We could have dealt with the second goal better after a free kick we shouldn’t have given away, and with the third we can just defend better.

“I feel the only thing that was missing was a bit of belief and I don’t think we believed we could win the game when we went a goal down but that wouldn’t have been the case two or three months ago. We’ve probably got players now that are doing things they wouldn’t have done then, or not doing things that they would have done. It is hard for them and they are very despondent.

“When you have a potential confidence crisis, not everyone wants the ball, so the man on the ball doesn’t have as many options and sometimes, no matter what you do or what you say, we need to get a scrappy 1-0 win that gets us three points and gets the confidence back on track.

“The man management in me tells me that at this moment in time they need to be cuddled rather than kicked, because they’ve had enough kicks over the last few months and they don’t need any more.

“I’ll give them all the support they need until we come out of it. We’ve got to knuckle down and try to get back to doing the things that got us to fifth in the table two months ago.”

There was a final word for Kyle Lafferty following his full debut,” I thought he played very well for us. He’s been on loan to Darlington which has done him the power of good. David Hodgson has done a terrific job with him and he’s come back a different player and, as you could see, he wasn’t suffering from a lack of confidence. He looked as though he had mas much confidence on his full than Frank Sinclair did and he’s played in cup finals.

“Michael Ricketts was sent home ill from training yesterday, so we left that one overnight, but Kyle was always going to start this week and when Michael couldn’t play it was a question of who was going to be Kyle’s partner.”