Paul Tisdale was critical of his Bristol Rovers players after Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Rochdale at the Mem, which kept the Gas just a point clear of the relegation zone.
Alex Newby was gifted a brace either side of Luke Leahy’s equaliser. Newby’s first came from a terribly-defended corner – Rovers’ Achilles heel in recent weeks – before his tame shot beat Joe Day and squirmed over the line in the second half.
The Gas were unable to follow up a superb defensive shift at Peterborough United on Tuesday with a similar mistake-free performance, causing huge frustration for the manager.
There was a change in tone from Tisdale’s press conferences after recent defeats. This evening his was forthright and angry, as self-inflicted errors cost his side dearly once again.
“As you can imagine, I’m disappointed to lose,” he said.
“We are in a position where we need to play standard play and be good at standard football, it’s not about how pretty it becomes or how nice it is.
“It’s about making sure we make enough sensible decisions and we optimise our game. When it was tough on Tuesday, we played standard play and they were good at it.
“Today they were poor again and it’s got to stop.
“It was a different game compared to during the week, a different opponent and challenge, but you’ve got to stick to standard play.
“Doing things simply and well is good play and we became off-piste again. OK, we could’ve easily got a result today but we weren’t in a position where we were going to make sure we had a result.
“There were too many grey areas, the ball didn’t go into the box enough when we had the chance to, but I’m more concerned about conceding two very soft goals again.”
Tisdale’s frustrations stemmed from Rovers’ dead ball defending in particular, and he once has demanded an improvement in that department.
“The first one was a set-piece goal, so that’s been a theme for us recently and we’ve got to eradicate it,” the manager said.
“It’s not as if we’re not talking about it and coaching on it, we’ve just got to make sure that we remove those kinds of goals from our game.
“Clearly we’re not doing well enough, there’s got to be a reason why.
“You can have the odd goal which just goes against you and you can’t stop because there’s a something perfect about it.
“I think the accumulation recently suggests that’s not the only reason.
“We’ve got to do better, there’s organisation and platform you put in place but the players have got to go and execute it and apply themselves.”
