United midfielder Jamie Devitt picked up the Peter Jackson the Jeweller man-of-the-match award on Saturday afternoon but he was quick to point out after the game that he’d have swapped the accolade for a poor performance and three points for the team had he been given the choice.
“An award like that is nice recognition but I don’t really look into things like that too much,” he said. “I’d rather have the three points to be totally honest with you. Even if we didn’t play well and got the win it would be a better feeling, because when it comes down to it we’re in a result based industry.
“We’re all really disappointed with the result. We need to bounce back quickly because you don’t get time in League Two to sit and analyse everything too much. We have a game again on Tuesday night and then we’re straight back to league action. We’ll sit down and look at what we did on Monday morning, but then we’ll put it to bed.”
“We need to get this result out of our heads and make sure we put performances in this week,” he continued. “There are no excuses coming from us for why we lost, but I don’t think we got our fair share of the decisions. There’ll be times when it goes our way and we get them, but that doesn’t make it feel any easier now.
It felt like we didn’t get any of the 50:50 decisions at all and that can end up costing you the game ...
“It felt like we didn’t get any of the 50:50 decisions at all and that can end up costing you the game. Their first goal annoyed me because the foul was given against me, and I don’t think it was. The lad got in front of me, and I had to let him go, but he fell to the ground and conned the referee anyway. It was clever play from him.
“The second goal was a punch on the ball which wasn’t spotted, so he shouldn’t even have been on the pitch at the end of the game. Those decisions didn’t go our way so all we can do is take it on the chin and go again.”
Speaking about the goals conceded, he said: “Like I say, we need to pick ourselves up and we need to make sure we learn from any mistakes we made. People were down when they came into the dressing room but the lad who made the mistake for their second goal is probably the best player on the pitch.
“Some of the things he does with his passing and tackling are out of this world so it was just one of those things. He came in at full time and said sorry but that isn’t something which will happen every week off him, because he’s an unbelievable player.”
And on the positives to be taken from the game, he told us: “A few of us said at half time that if we’d scored the first goal we’d have gone on to win it. I thought I’d scored when I went on my run and I was gutted when it came back off the post.
“They had a rebound which their man put in the back of the net – which, like I said earlier, we think was a hand ball – and that’s football for you. Some of them go for you and some of them don’t.
“Even when they went two up we thought we could still get something out of the game with the chances we had. It just didn’t go our way.”
Next up for the Cumbrians is the Carabao Cup first round game against Fleetwood Town on Tuesday night.
“The fact we have a game coming so quickly is a good thing,” he told us. “If you ask the lads they’ll tell you they’d rather be playing than training anyway. It’s a game we’re looking forward to and hopefully it’s the start of a good cup run.
“Fleetwood are a good side and they are the type of team we want to be playing against. If we get a good result against them it could mean we get another good draw in the next round.
“The other thing to remember is that we’re all playing for places so whoever is picked on Tuesday night will be doing everything they can to keep the shirt. That’s why we know we’ll give another good performance.”
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