Academy manager Alan Moore with Morecambe match reaction
Academy manager Alan Moore gave us his reaction to the 3-3 away draw at Morecambe last Saturday.
“It wasn’t a good game from a coaching point of view,” he said. “We had a man sent off after 60 minutes and we didn’t equalise until late on.
“The lads were happy after the game because they’d managed to get a draw when they were down to ten men for half an hour. From my point of view they didn’t do what we asked them to do and that was disappointing for us.”
“If we’re being honest, we’ve thought this was coming for a while now,” he added. “The standard of the jobs they do around the place has tailed off a little bit and they’ve started to gauge their performances off results. They’ve forgotten that getting results in the first place comes from hard work and doing your job properly.
“We didn’t get that in any way, shape or form against Morecambe and we saw a lot of players who wanted to be undisciplined and do what they wanted to do out on the pitch. That isn’t what we teach them so we’ll never be happy with it.”
“There were a few stern words at full time and we have some psychological work we need to do with them to remind them what they are here for,” he told us. “It’s a two year process for them to learn how to be a footballer and it isn’t all about winning a game on a Saturday. As I say, they are gauging their performances on things which aren’t really relevant and they’re losing sight of the bigger picture.
“A positive we can take from it is that we’re still scoring goals. We had an under 16 lad in, Kieran Hall, and he played very well when you consider it was his first start. He scored two and he could have had another five or six. He was the outstanding player on the day because he showed a hunger and desire to do the right things.
“That should worry the other lads because they definitely forgot why they were there. It’s almost as if they have their feet under the table and they need to understand that they must kick on again. We’ll push them to get that from them again.”
“As I say, we could definitely sense this was going to happen,” he said. “Too many little things have been dropping off because they’re young lads and they think they’ve done the hard work by getting a few good results.
“They’re wrong because getting the contract is the really hard part of this job. Things only get harder after that has happened. The manager is looking at all of our players at the moment with the 11v11 games he’s been doing.
“He’ll be assessing them and they also need to know that we have to have something positive to take back to him after our games on a Saturday. He wants to know that they’re doing what they’re being asked to do, and that wasn’t the case last Saturday.”
“It’s a long away trip to Shrewsbury on Saturday and we’re looking for a positive reaction in training this week before we start to think about that one,” he commented. “They need to be back on track with what they should be doing, day in and day out, and hopefully we’ll see plenty of evidence of that happening.
“They’re a good group but they’re so honest they forget the whole aim of being here is to get a professional contract. If they lose touch with that for too long they’ll start to struggle, and we don’t want to see that.”
United – Fowler, Hurley, Marshall, White (Taylor 75), Douglas, Robson, Moyes, Quigley (Pearson 65), Hall, Hammell, Bradbury (Blackburn 60). Subs – Eccles, Rudd.
Goals – Hall (2), Marshall
Sent off – Marshall
Next up – Shrewsbury Town v Carlisle United, Saturday 13 December, kick off 11am
