Luke Joyce on the Mansfield and Crewe games
We spoke to midfielder Luke Joyce shortly after full time at Mansfield on Saturday to get his thoughts on the game.“We’re massively disappointed,” he said. “We knew what to expect from Mansfield because they’re a big, strong, physical side. They don’t necessarily play attractive football but they do the ugly things and the simple things well.
“That’s probably what has cost us the game. We had a game plan but we didn’t execute it in the way we wanted to. We conceded two goals which were soft goals in our opinion. To concede any goal is disappointing, but there wasn’t much happening in the game until that point.
“I’m not quite sure how it came about but it’s a cross into our box which we were disappointed with. Ideally we want to deal with it better once it does get in there and get first contact. Their striker got that first contact and looped it over Mark [Gillespie]."
“The support we had from the fans was excellent," he continued. "They travelled in their numbers again and we just need them to keep behind us. I know they’re frustrated because we’re frustrated. I’ve been a fan myself and you want your team to win every week.
"We can only applaud them for travelling as they do every week. We expect better from ourselves. We aren’t going out there not wanting to win games, we’re working as hard as we can and we’re desperate to put it right."
“We know we’re a lot better than what we’re showing at the moment," he added. "We can’t quite put our finger on why we’re on this run of form - it’s crazy to think we’re still only six points off an automatic promotion place. It almost feels like we’re in a relegation battle and it's mad when you think of our early season form and how well we did.
“There’s only us who can get us out of it, with the backing of the supporters. We know it’s down to ourselves. We’ve obviously got injury issues and players who aren’t playing, which is a factor to a point, but we know we’ve got a good squad who can go out there and win games of football.
“There's still a lot of belief in that dressing room. We showed great determination on Tuesday night to keep a clean sheet. We still think we should be winning our home games, and we’re looking forward to Crewe already. We’re back at Brunton Park and we need to start picking points up quickly."
“Not scoring goals is frustrating because we know we’ve got players who can score," he told us. "We need to keep trying to create chances and keep getting bodies in the box, and it will drop for us. We need to keep putting the hard graft in and keep that desire and determination to score goals.
“Every week is important in terms of preparing for the next game. We’ll regroup and analyse the game, we’ll be frustrated and down, but we’ll have to use that as a motivation to go out there on Saturday and get the three points we need.”
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