Boss John Sheridan gave us more reaction to the weekend home defeat as he spoke more about the run of four games without a goal on our own turf.
“We keep shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “It simply isn’t good enough. That’s four games at home where we haven’t scored a goal and nobody wants that.
“We’ve had one or two chances to score, but you have to take them or you just make life hard for yourselves. If we’d taken the chances we created in the first half we’d still be in the game and the outcome might have been different, but that isn’t what happened so there’s no point going on about it.
“Being honest, it’s a game where I don’t think we really got going at all. I think we have good players and we have good experience in the team, so there are people there who should see the game a lot better.”
“It’s hard for me to try to explain things like this because we’re all watching these games,” he added. “At Oldham last week we played some great football, and we dug a result out at Bury, so we’re looking a good team away from home.
“I’m coming out to speak to you and I’m saying the opposite week in and week out. For some reason at home we just don’t seem to have the belief and know-how that we’re showing when we’re away.
“If the game is tight, just keep it tight. You don’t have to stretch the game or leave big gaps. I thought the distances between the lines were too great and people didn’t seem to know when to tuck in and when to get tight. We were just too spread out and it makes us vulnerable.
“We’re still guilty of making rash decisions and it’s putting us on the back foot. For some reason we keep doing these things at home and it really does puzzle me as to why it’s the case.”
“I’m not looking for excuses for why it’s how it is, and I won’t make any either,” he insisted. “The team we had out was good enough to win the game. We had enough experience, even with one or two missing, to mean that we were still strong enough to have won the game, and that’s with no disrespect to Morecambe.
“I like Jim [Bentley], he does a good job there, so good luck to them. However, I feel we should be beating them at home. The reality is that we didn’t deserve to win it because Morecambe were better than us. We created a couple of chances in the first half but, overall, we made the wrong decisions on too many occasions.
“I’ve told the players in the dressing room that I really am puzzled as to why this is happening. I’m watching the same players run things at away games, so I’m asking why we’re getting performances like this at home. None of them can give me an answer.
“Look, I’m the manager and I pick the team, and sometimes you can look at the result and people will want to blame me. That’s part and parcel of my job. I honestly don’t think I picked the wrong team this time, but those I did select simply didn’t perform.
“I always look at myself when we lose a game, to see if we need to play a different system or change things up front, but we do need to be more solid and tight as a unit. On the other side of it we can’t accept four games at home without scoring.
“Not scoring is a massive problem and that’s something we’re going to have to work very hard at, because we know we need to get back to winning ways at Brunton Park. If we’re going to go anywhere this season our home form needs to be much better, and we’re not doing it at the moment. We can’t be winning one and losing one if we’re going to be where we want to be. We need to be on winning runs otherwise we’ll start dropping away.”
“I never thought at any point that we’d be talking about a run like this from our home games,” he concluded. “It really isn’t fair on the supporters because they come here expecting us to win. We’re sending them home feeling really down, and that’s hard for me to take.
“They’re entitled to grumble when you haven’t won at home for four games. I think they’ve got a right to do that when you see the results. We should be doing better than this. I’m as frustrated and disappointed as the fans because we haven’t scored a goal again. That isn’t good enough, it just isn’t.”
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