Management thoughts on yeterday’s Cup Semi defeat

Posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

Mike says –

“I’m surprisingly upbeat this morning. Not being around last Saturday to witness our defeat at Innerleithen I felt as low as I’ve ever done in football when writing my piece for the website. As I said to the players after the game against City yesterday “it’s easier taking a defeat when you witness it and see the effort and commitment your players have put in than when you hear things second hand.” Don’t get me wrong no-one likes to lose especially in a cup semi-final, at home, and for the second game in a row but football is a wonderful game and sometimes it just isn’t your day. The thing is not to over analyse the 90 minutes, apportion blame, look too deep into to what happened but to dust yourself down, keep the faith and look forward to the next game. We had plenty possession yesterday but weren’t sharp enough with our passing and invariably picked the wrong option. Our biggest fault was not working the City keeper more but a lot of that goes down to how well City set up and defended.

Yesterday was City’s day, end of. If any team in Britain at any level scored 3  better goals than our opponents yesterday I’ll eat my hat – make that hat’s as I’ve got quite a few. City sat behind the ball, broke at pace, in number and when Robbie Ross is in the mood you know you are in trouble. City weren’t a one man team however and I presume that’s as good a performance as they’ve given their management and supporters all season. 

We may look to others as though we’ve lost our way a bit but I’d be wary if that was their assumption. I for one am glad we are away to Whitehill next Saturday in what will be a cracking game. Our aspirations to finish on a high are very much still there in the home dressing room and in a season which started with a series World Cup goals hitting our net, middled with the McLeod saga and witnessed 3 wonder goals yesterday we have to think we’re due an even break. Because of our new surface our fixtures have been all away, then all at home and now we finish all away again.  

On Tuesday Sam, Mike and myself will lift the players who need lifting, remind the group of how good they really are when they focus on what they do well and start preparing for Rosewell on Saturday. We may have lost yesterday but it was great to be back in the dugout.”

Mike