Defender gives us his thoughts on Tuesday night
Defender Danny Livesey took the captain’s armband on Tuesday night and he spoke to us at full time about the disappointment of a defeat following a much-improved display.
“It’s good to be back and playing but it does feel a little bit hollow right now,” he said.
“It wasn’t a good result but I think we can take something out of the game. We just need to keep that belief and get rid of the silly goals.”
“The belief is still there,” he insisted. “We’ve been in situations before where we’ve been struggling and there’s been a feeling that we weren’t going to get out of it. I don’t feel that at all this time.
“The lads are working hard and everyone wants to improve,” he added. “I think when we get that next win or clean sheet then we’ll be able to kick on from there. We’ve talked about the number of goals we’re conceding and as a defensive group we’re all embarrassed. We don’t get paid to lose games, we get paid not to lose them, and we’re not doing that at the moment. We need to be stronger on set pieces, we were done by two of those tonight, and it’s quite obvious that's a problem. If we keep conceding like that then we’ll lose games.”
“I felt I should have done more with their first goal,” he admitted. “It was a great cross and he got above me and I’m not happy about that at all. I’ve scored a few of those myself and it happens. It shouldn’t happen and I’ll beat myself up over it until Saturday when I can get out there and put it right.”
“We can’t put our fingers on why this is happening but we need to address it,” he continued. “You look around the dressing room after a couple of result like this and no-one wants to be in this situation. You go home and it’s in your head, you’re angry and you just can’t wait for the next game. We’d be happy to come away with a 0-0 draw on Saturday because then we can say we owe that to the gaffer, Kav and to the fans. We need to start getting a few clean sheets because we can’t progress if we aren’t keeping the goals out.”
“From a team point of view this is probably one of the hardest times I’ve had here, just because we can’t put our finger on what is going wrong at home,” he said. “Greg [Abbott] has been brilliant, he hasn’t gone into his shell like some other managers, and that’s because he’s a fighter.
“He keeps trying to make us better and we all look to him to get us out of this. We did it last season when he was under a bit of pressure and we almost got into the play-offs. We know we’ve got a good enough squad to get out of this. We all still believe that he’s the right man to do this and I think we all probably owe it to him to do it.
“We know that we’ve got ourselves into this mess and we’re the first to criticise ourselves. I’ve looked at my performance tonight and I know that I needed to do more for their first goal, and that’s the same throughout the dressing room. We know how important it is to perform for the manager and the fans and it’s something we all need to improve on.”
“The fans were unbelievable,” he concluded. “Even at half time they applauded us off and that gives us a little boost. We know we’re losing fans and it’s up to us to get them back. I’m not going to start telling them to come back because you wouldn’t, would you? When you’re paying every week and your team are losing you’re going to switch off. It’s up to us to win them back and to make people think we’re worth coming to see again. We can only do that by sorting ourselves out.”
United Player subscribers can see a video interview with Danny Livesey now. Click HERE to go to the Player platform. Follow the same link for more information on United Player, and to subscribe.
