I had hoped a corner had been turned with the previous 2 results , as they had been achieved very differently . We had won the first with a decent half of football and then a resilient second half with a few slices of luck on the way , and the second with a very complete overall performance , that only lacked more clinical finishing , thereby stopping us from winning more comfortably .
In the build up to this one I was really optimistic but we went backwards . Enforced changes didn't help but I felt we had no legs at all in midfield for the full 90 , surrendering almost total control of the game . What it meant was we didn't create much going forward and had to defend far too often , so the fact that we lost wasn't a surprise . Results are what they are but the nature of the performance wasn't acceptable to me .
There were a couple of surprises in the game . Firstly that we somehow went in at the break all square and that secondly on the hour mark we had again found ourselves level after conceding immediately after the restart .
The team talk was about positives and I was able to gloss over the loss of 2 players in the first half through injury and hoped our good fortune could act as a platform . The early goal against and our response set that platform and for 10 minutes we looked the most likely . In all honesty that spell was the only point in the game where we were on top and Halls Athletic defended well to keep us out and then just rolled us over in the last 20 . We showed no character and were deservedly beaten and now having missed a chance to move out of the relegation zone , we go in to the next few matches under significant pressure .
As always we will try to find solutions but the players have to take some accountability and show some desire to work our way out of this mess .