Following our four nil defeat to Shrewsbury Town in midweek, manager James Beattie has said he’ll shoulder the blame for the loss.
Speaking to the Accrington Observer following the heavy defeat, the gaffer was quick to take blame away from the players given the week that the club have had.
With news coming out today about a break in prior to the game where players lost boots, and equipment, the gaffer said that he was confident they would learn from the game and would bounce back as better players for it.
‘It will be a big job to pick them up for Saturday. We’ve had certain things happen at the club this week which haven’t helped, but they’re a young bunch and they’re willing to learn. And I’m more than willing to take the blame for the performance. I’ll take that on my shoulders squarely and we’ll come back and be okay. We need to keep our heads down because there are some very good players in that dressing room. As I say, I’ll back them all the way. The only thing we can do is keep working hard and role our sleeves up and try to get ready for Saturday.’
Where ever the gaffer apportions blame and whatever distraction off pitch issues may have been, when talking about the performance he had to admit that for their two opening goals the defence had just switched off and we can’t afford to do that – and in many ways for him, it’s uncharacteristic for the group to switch off like that given how hard they work and how focused they normally are.
‘I don’t think we can deny, if we want to win matches we can’t give goals away like that. We talk about what we’re trying to do every game and some of the fundamentals never change. It doesn’t matter level you are playing at, to be dilly-dallying on the edge of your box is not one. There are things we need to look at, of course there are.’
Beattie goes on to add that the first goal was unlucky for Luke, and the ‘nature’ of it he felt really hit the players hard, which was disappointing because he’s talked to them about not letting events within a match change the focus or alter the plans but he accepts sometimes it does happen despite your best efforts, and then we started making bad decisions – which we don’t normally do – and that helped contribute to the final scoreline.
A learning curve and just one of those days hopefully, we all know they can do a lot better than that an whilst the start to the season hasn’t been what anybody wanted or hoped for, we’ve got out of deeper trouble than this so the players just need to keep believing and not get too downhearted.
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