We're good entertainment value because there's always goals

Last Updated : 08-Oct-2007 by
Jones is not a manager who will give the opposition any credit, he does tend to make some bizarre comments, a year ago he left the listening press shaking their heads in disbelief.

"We shouldn't have drawn the last two away games and we know that," he said. "The lesson today was to keep a clean sheet and we didn't do that, so you can say we didn't learn that lesson.

"But it was a battling performance, and in the second half when he made his changes and put all the big guns, six foot plus's on and you know what's going to happen. They were going to bombard our box with high balls. So I think we dealt with that quite well.

"We got the ball down to play and Joe Ledley could have walked away today with the ball because he was absolutely outstanding. But why we keep giving teams hope at 2-1 I don't know, we need to kill it off. The second half was more of a battling display, which I feel we totally dominated."

Steve Cotterill was disappointed, but did feel we should have won ourselves a point after the second half performance. "What happened to us, even from the start of the game, we looked fatigued in certain areas. I thought John Spicer was our best player by a mile in the first half and we needed everybody to join in with him. In the second half they did do that.

"I thought in the second half we could have definitely got a point out of the game. When Ade scored I thought there would only be one team that would win it, I was sure about that. I thought we were coming on very strong, I thought the substitutes, not having played all the game would give them good legs and good impetus."

He wasn't happy with the two goals we conceded. "The first goal is the disappointing bit for us and even the second goal. We've spoken about Parry coming inside and making sure because he's left footed, he doesn't come inside and get his shots off. We've got to make sure we block those shots.

"I thought the game was heading for 0-0 at half-time, which would have suited us, especially conceding a couple of goals in the last two games. So it was disappointing to not stop a cross, which we could have done, and then get picked off with a header. That was a disappointment for us.

"Just conceding goals is something we don't enjoy. People know how I am about clean sheets, we're not happy with conceding goals. Neither are the lads. They are the ones who have got to get a little bit more angry to make sure we don't concede them, because otherwise it's always an uphill task for the strikers to unlock doors, or the wide men or midfield players to unlock doors.

"We've got to make sure that we tighten things up. Wherever we go at the moment we're good entertainment value because there's always goals. Unfortunately, they're getting a few like we're getting a few."

The pleasing thing for the manager was a return to action for Chris McCann in the second half. "Getting Chris McCann through is a real bonus, because he's a very good player. There weren't too many bonuses to come out of today obviously, but Chris up and running is good news for us really. We haven't got to worry about him in the next fortnight now as to whether he will be fit and available again.

"We didn't think he would make it and I wasn't quite sure about playing the full ninety minutes with him. That was the big problem and that's why we shaped up like we shaped up. If I'd have known he would have been fit and had a bit more than a day's training in him I think I might have started him."

On the change of formation he said: "We knew at the end of these 21 days with the seven games we've had, we knew it was going to be tough coming here. It is tough on the legs. So we changed our shape a bit knowing full well what we could do later on in the game, although it was probably more from the 60th minute when we wanted to make our changes, but we needed to make them at half-time.

"The big risk was obviously playing Chris but he came through the game very well I felt. But then it was too little, too late. We've absolutely bombarded them in the second half. We haven't done that in three years of coming down here. Unfortunately we couldn't unlock the door at the end to get a second equaliser.

"If we'd won 2-1 we'd be delighted with having a break now. When you just lose 2-1 probably not, but there's nothing we can do about that. It might be okay. We can take a little bit of stock, and irrespective of the result the players need a little bit of time off. They need a bit of a break just to clear up any niggles. You can't train them every day now because they'll never get their energy levels back up."

We've done alright this season. We're disappointed a little bit with our first half here and we're disappointed with the last two home games where we haven't got wins. But all in all we've had a solid enough start, and it is only a start. If we were top of the league after nine games I'd be telling you exactly the same thing, with my feet on the floor saying it's only a start. We're playing all right. We're playing good football."