United manager Paul Simpson gave us his reaction to the 3-1 away defeat at Orient shortly after full-time on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s massively disappointing,” he said. “I thought in the first half we were unfortunate for the penalty because I thought Sam was pulled down before it was given.
“I get that he’s kicked their lad in the head, so I can see why the referee has given that.
“I felt as though we needed to change it to get some forward play at half time. Dan Butterworth was a little bit unfortunate, but I felt as though that shape was something that would give us a chance.
“We started the second half much brighter and much more positive, we actually passed the ball to each other instead of giving it away cheaply.
“We got ourselves level with a really good goal but then they probably had a couple of minutes of pressure once it was 1-1 and we went under.
“We didn’t work hard enough to stop the cross, exactly like I talked about at Cambridge last week, and Corey [Whelan] has got to be aware of the lad coming in behind him and defend the goals. We’re defending outside the white posts and if you do that you’re going to give yourself a problem.
“For the third goal I keep saying it but the ball has gone long up to Ryan Edmondson and we have to compete better.
“We’ve lost the first contact, the ball gets hooked on and Corey has been outmuscled by the striker, and they were clean through. It’s really disappointing and we need to address it very quickly.”
All goals are horrible to concede, but he agreed that the second half finishes were both bad ones to watch.
“They were,” he commented. “I thought we had Orient at one point, but in the end they absolutely deserved to go through, we can’t have any complaints about that.
“I think they’re a good football team, a little bit different to last year with the way they go about it, but a good football team.
“I thought there was a spell in the second half where we had an opportunity to get ourselves through, or at least get a replay.
“Unfortunately we consistently don’t do the horrible crap jobs that you have to do in football, and you get punished if you don’t do those properly.
“And the other thing is that it was a good finish for our goal. We’re relying on him at the moment and the truth is we probably weren’t expecting to have to rely on him.
“He’s putting performances in and working his socks off. He needs some support though, because at the moment we’re not getting full support from everybody involved.”
“I seem to be repeating myself in each interview at the moment,” he told us. “It’s a consistency thing that’s letting ourselves down.
“This week we did work on defending our box, working hard to stop crosses, then defending the box when balls are coming in.
“We do it really well in training then it comes to a game and it doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t happen enough. We did work on finishing and getting in and around the box and working goalkeepers.
“The players are capable of doing it but we’ve got to do it consistently well, and at the moment we’re not.
“I can’t thank the fans enough that they’re sticking with us. The problem is we’re not giving them enough.
“Sticking with us is wonderful but we have to start giving them more back and putting in complete performances to actually warrant the level of support we’re getting.
“I find it incredible that a football club in the FA Cup are only opening three stands and one is for our fans. We’ve got fantastic support and we’ve got to do a bit more to keep them with us.”
