Joey, in comparison to recent games, was that a bit flat?
I don’t think we fired on all cylinders, certainly in the first half. We were fine with the ball without causing any real moments of danger and then we just get a bit sloppy in terms of we don’t defend a throw properly.
It leads to a corner and we go a goal down and I was disappointed with the response to that. We were second best to everything for the next five or 10 minutes after that and we gave them a bit of confidence and they managed to get a second goal in there.
I was tempted to make the changes a bit earlier, but I gave the lads time to respond and we’ve utilised the squad again and it was an opportunity to look at people with next season in mind.
Some lads have had auditions today. I’m happy with some parts of it but the result and the level of performance, certainly in the first period, was not at the expected standard for us going forwards.
After 30 minutes, Port Vale had two goals in the bank and something to defend and it was always going to be difficult after that. It was the goals that killed you and was the manner of them disappointing?
Yeah, defending the first phase, it’s very important you get your contact on that, and we didn’t defend the second phase after that. We’ve got no qualms, we’ve got to be better in that regard.
People are auditioning for places on the bus next season to hopefully improve and when you see moments like that, as a team we have to defend that better.
We can say ‘Have we got anything on the line? Are they a bit more motivated than us for what’s at stake?’ But that is absolutely no excuse not to defend your goal properly and we must be better.
You mention auditions. Presumably, you don’t make your mind up on a one-off performance against Port Vale, but does it help swing things one way or the other sometimes?
No, I just said to the lads in there that everyone has had a fair crack of the whip over the season and when you sit down with them at the end of the season and you give them their appraisals or you have a conversation with them, it’s really important for us to look people in the eye and give them a solid reasoning for the decisions we’re going to make.
I said to them in there ‘Look, at the end of the season there’ll be nobody who will be able to argue with anything we’ve said because we’ve given you more than ample opportunity to show us what you can do and, unfortunately, we’re not running a charity.
We wanted to stay in the division this year, which we have done, but I don’t want to finish 15th, 16th, 17th next year, and any player who might think we’re happy with staying up next year will be seriously considering his state of mind if he thinks that’s going to be the case when we report back for pre-season.
We’ve got a job to do and we’ve got to finish the league off strongly, but we won’t get any joy if we’re defending the way we did for the first two goals.
Jed Ward, he couldn’t be faulted for either goal, could he?
No, I thought he was superb and it was an opportunity to get another look at him. With a crowd in, it’s an invaluable experience for Jed and he didn’t look out of place.
You wouldn’t have thought we had a young keeper making his second league start. He was really competent and I don’t think he could do much about either goal.
He kicked really well and his decision-making was really good, even when he came out in the second half at 2-0 with that counter-attack. He kept his discipline and composure really well, it would have been easy for a young keeper to be a bit rash there.
But he showed the belief and talent we think he has got by performing at the level he did. I’m really pleased with him.
Joey, was there a shortage of intensity and maybe a few of those lads at the back a little bit short of confidence?
We’ve got to defend it better as a team. It’s natural you pick apart the seams of the defence because they are the last wave in front of it trying to extinguish a fire, but I certainly think for the first goal there was a throw-in in their half that we have to defend much better, which ultimately stops them getting the opportunity to deliver the ball in the box from a corner, and then we have got to defend that much better as a defensive unit or as a team.
Everyone’s aware of the expectations and what I want next year. The lads have been superb for me; we’re a newly-promoted side that came up from League Two in mad circumstances and we’ve stayed up from games to spare.
We were miles short of our expected output today, certainly in the first period. I felt the lads had a right go in the second half when we made a lot of changes and got minutes in there.
We’ve lost the battle today, but we’ll certainly learn from it and I’m going to experiment between now and the end of the season because I want to challenge for promotion out of this division next season.
We’ve got to shake the snow globe to see what we’ve got at our disposal before we look to recruit in the summer.
When Jed came off at the end, I saw you went straight to him. What was your immediate message to him after the game? It looked like he had acquitted himself really well.
He’s a top keeper, he’s going to be a top keeper. He just needs a little bit of time. Like all good racehorses, if you throw them in too soon, some come to hand a lot quicker, your Wayne Rooney types who are men at 15 and 16. Obviously, everybody else is on a sliding scale from that.
We’ve got a nice mixture of young lads in the group and the difficulty is they are learning on the job and the mistakes cost you and we’ve got to add a bit of nous and experience to our group in the summer.
These games now are key to finding out where and what we add to our group.
Jed is definitely one for the future for the Gas. I think he’s going to be a future number one and, from our perspective, you want to give him that exposure and that experience.
Today, he’s more than acquitted himself and shown what a good goalkeeper he is. He will be disappointed he hasn’t kept a clean sheet, but I’m not sure he could do much about the two goals and we have to defend that as a team better.
There were 700 Gasheads here for what was a dead rubber from Rovers’ perspective. With plenty going on in the world, that’s a great effort from them, isn’t it?
Absolutely. Last year, we came and we had that full (away) end, but it was natural because of the momentum we had, and you’re surprised how many came today.
It’s expensive to watch football and we’ve got a lot of games coming thick and fast and it would have been easy for them to stay at home and after 30 minutes they probably wished they had, but in the second half the lads kept scrapping away.
We tried to make something happen and today we weren’t good enough in that final third and we didn’t defend our box well enough and we deservedly lost the game.
Finally, there was a nice moment in the 16th minute to recognise Nick Anderton after the news of his retirement. You guys are still with him all the way.
Yeah. We’re hoping to get him back once he’s in recovery and he feels up to it. We’d love to get him back as part of the group.
What role we use him in, I’m not sure. If he had been here in the first 15 minutes, we might have been throwing him on and getting him a game because he was a great team man, Nick. He would never let you down and if we can open up an opportunity for him to continue his footballing career, albeit he won’t be a player again, but there are lots of other jobs in football.
Nick is a fantastic man, he was brilliant in our football team. When he’s up to it, we can get him back involved and utilise him in a different way.
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