David Amoo with some Orient reaction
Wide man David Amoo spoke about the disappointment of the manner of the opening day defeat shortly after full time on Saturday evening.
“It was a tough game but that’s how football is,” he said. “There are ups and downs but this one was very disappointing for us.
“Everyone was looking forward to the first game of the season and this has dropped us right back down to earth. Football is all peaks and troughs though, and you just have to deal with it.
“I thought we gave a good account of ourselves before the red card but we lost it a bit in that last half hour when they took it up a notch. It’s just very, very disappointing.”
And he admitted that a little bit of the shine of scoring his first goal for the club had been removed by the manner of the end result.
“It’s the first penalty I’ve taken in professional football,” he revealed. “I was a little bit nervous but I knew that I just had to put it in the net. It’s my first goal for the club but, right now, it doesn’t mean as much as it should.
“I didn’t think about the fact I’d even scored a goal until I came in for this interview because it’s more about the disappointment of the result than anything else today.”
The opportunity to take the penalty came about, of course, came about when regular spot-kick specialist Lee Miller was given his marching orders with just 31 minutes on the clock.
“I was quite close to that incident,” he confirmed. “It was one of those things that happens all the time and both players usually get up from it and walk away. In this situation their player was in a bad place and I was quite shocked when I saw him.
“I think the officials had a lot of time to talk and they also saw how bad the lad looked. They didn’t seem to have any other option, to be fair.
“It was 100% accidental because Lee wouldn’t do anything like that deliberately. He’s in the dressing room and he’s just shell-shocked and gutted, like everyone else. He’s disappointed for all of the lads.
“He’s an important player and we just want him back as soon as possible. We’re not going to pause our season just because Lee is out though. We’ll be fine.”
“He obviously usually takes the penalties and we didn’t have a contingency plan to say who would take them if he wasn’t available,” he said. “As soon as it was given I decided that I would go for it. It was good to get a goal but not so good in this kind of situation.
“A couple of the Orient lads were giving me stick so all I did was try to focus on what I had to do. Fortunately for me I slotted it in. It’s a nice feeling when it hits the back of the net and I thought we were back in it after that. Unfortunately that isn’t how it worked out.”
“It’s going to be tough after we’ve had a disappointing game like this,” he continued. “It’s always a bad weekend after something like this but, if we pull together and work hard on Monday, then hopefully things will improve.
“We have a good set of lads but I think sometimes that maybe we’re too nice. I’ve been at clubs where there are people in the changing room where you think – he’s a bad character – but we don’t have that here. We’re honest and we work hard, so it’s not something to look at in a bad way.
“We all have our opinions and I think we all take responsibility for it as well. We do talk to each other and question what we could have done better, but we also have to stick together and help each other to move forward.”
“We can do that on Wednesday night,” he concluded. “We’ve beaten Championship opposition recently and there’s not going to be much pressure on us because everyone will expect Blackburn to win. They’re one of the favourites in their division to go up but we just need to get out there and enjoy it.”
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