United boss Greg Abbott (GA) spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's Andy Wood (AW) following Carlisle's 4-0 League One defeat at home to Coventry City, Abbott saying that the Blues are lacking confidence at the moment:
GA
I am going to tell you, and I usually keep the dressing room private, but I am going to tell you what I said to the players because I think at a stage like that people need to know. I think the dressing room is so fragile and the players are lacking so much confidence, everything that goes against them is affecting them. At the end it looks more ragged than it should be, I overheard Sean O’Hanlon saying on paper, man for man, we have got a decent squad, and he is absolutely right.
The majority of these players played against Doncaster when we beat Doncaster away and they won the league, Mark Beck played against Yeovil and scored two and we won 3-1 and they went up. But, they are not the same players at the moment because they are really fragile and we have spoken to them with a lot of honesty to be honest.
We haven’t screamed at them because the last thing they need now, because they are going to get enough people and I will get enough people screaming at us, they need somebody to console them. It is like a disease, you fight like mad against a disease and then eventually you have got to put a little bit of medicine in to try to cure it. I think at the minute they need a bit of medicine and I hope that doesn’t sound flash or trying to be clever, I am absolutely not because I am not in a clever mood at the moment.
But, the dressing room is so, so down and so, so low, and we feel as a group, everybody, and I hope the players allow me to include everybody, that we have let people down. I have just gone to John Nixon and said that we feel that we have let people down, but we have to find a remedy to put that right. The group are OK with that, we all know together, and I am going to stand and take the whole of the responsibility to it.
Because, it is me that picks the team, it is me that tries to put the squad together, and whatever we have done over the early part of this season just hasn’t been good enough. I can look at a lot of explanations for you and reasons to make it sound a bit flowery and better in my favour. But, I am not, because at the end of the day it has been a shocking start to the season and we have to grow some real determination and get out of it.
Do you know what? It is every goal against you or every little thing that goes against you now, it gets that little bit harder. We have been here before, not sure we have been as desperate as this in my tenure but we knew with everything that is going on that things were going to be harder and harder and harder. We have got to try to do something about it to be honest, and I have told the players what I think of them as people and about their careers and where they are going to go and what they have to do.
It is a great game football, everybody loves football, it is isn’t a great game for us and the 18 or 19 or 23 or 24 players. It isn’t a great game for us, the 23 people in that dressing room, and I will tell you now, that hurt like mad. We are not physically hurt, we haven’t been beaten up in a nightclub or the town centre or anything like that, and I don’t hurt physically.
But, I will tell you what, my head is a lot sorer than people who have had concussion and cuts and bruises, that is how it feels and you can’t explain the feeling to anybody that has never been in the arena. I am in the arena to be shot at and I have been shot at today, and do you know what, quite rightly, because that team performance today wasn’t good enough and I will accept that completely.
If I don’t accept it completely then I can never ever be given a chance to put it right, do you know what I mean, I can’t start saying it was that or that or that or that or that. There are reasons along the way, but, no, that wasn’t good enough for me today was that. I am taking the rap for that, if I do I am hoping I am allowed a little bit of time to get the big players back.
Get everybody back, the confidence levels lifted, there is a different team in there I am telling you, I know at the minute it might seem desperate but there is a different team in there underneath that. Because, we have proved it and we have shown it and we think we have added to it. But, we need everybody, we do genuinely, no excuses, don’t anybody out there think that I am trying to make excuses but we need everybody genuinely fit.
Sean O’Hanlon is not quite fit but we had to try something different because we haven’t been decent defending and we think he does a good job, and he will be better for that game, he will. We will get Lee Miller back in the mix next week, we might get Matty Robson round it, and they will help the other players, not in the means that they will take their places and we are blaming him or him or him. But, they will help the other people because you are looking round and David Symington and David Amoo, even young Adam Campbell when he came on.
They all need a bit of help, Brad Potts needs a bit of help, he needs a bit of something round him that is going to help him. Mark Gillespie, I really feel a bit sorry for him, he needs a bit of help around him. Me and the other staff are going to be there to help them but the senior players will help them. I think Sean O’Hanlon has probably been as honest as he can possibly be, he was there to give some messages of help out I would hope to the young players.
Because at the minute, bang rock bottom, simple, you don’t expect me to dress it up and deflect from it. It is bang, bang rock bottom. I have never been quite as low as I have been here, I didn’t get relegated many times in my career but if we continue like that we will be. But, we are better, we genuinely believe we are better than that, I hope I am allowed to believe that because if I don’t then there is no point me being sat here anyway.
AW
So, how do you put it right, what do you do to put it right?
GA
We have got to convince them that they are better than they are. We have got to work harder at our shape, everybody has been 4-4-2, let’s get wide players, let’s get attacking players, but we do leave ourselves wide open. We are not as tight, we are not as compact, I think we have got to find a system that suits us, we might have to sacrifice. We didn’t play great football today with the 4-4-2, I genuinely think we pass it more with a 4-3-3.
I have got to go back to the drawing board and find a system, never mind playing pretty football, that stops goals going in. That is where we start, we stop goals going in. With a bit more protection in the middle of the pitch it allows us to do that and it allows us to pass the ball better than we are doing.
AW
And again today, a good few goals down before you could even get started?
GA
The game is finished, it is lost, finished, five minutes. I actually felt sorry for the players and we all felt sorry for ourselves a little bit because they were so pumped up in the dressing room and we can’t get them lifted any more. You have seen how pumped up they were, Paul Black gets a tackle in and it is a yellow card in 15 seconds. They were ready, but then that goes against you and absolutely knocks the stuffing out of you.
The key moment again probably to give us a fighting chance in the game, we miss a penalty. Which last week Coventry gifted goals when they conceded one, they did falter a little bit, but today they didn’t have that disappointment to deal with because we missed the opportunity to deliver it on them. Then Brad Potts has a shot which hits the inside of the post and bounces out, and that would have been nice because it just would have given us a little bit of a lift.
We needed to take some bonuses out of today, trust me, that would have big for us, it would have given us a goal which makes it feel a bit better and makes minds feel a bit better. We, at the minute, are interchanging mindsets, because the ability is there, anybody in here that says that is a poor team is wrong. It is playing like a poor team at the minute, that is right, I hope that makes a bit of sense but there is a better team in there than they are showing at the moment.
AW
You are saying there that you were looking for positives, I take it from what you have said that you couldn’t find any today?
GA
Nothing too much for me, I think I would be opening myself up to a massive amount, or even more criticism than I will probably get anyway by trying to say there are positives there. We will find some positives to deliver to the players and there was a positive team-talk afterwards and there was a positive arms of consolement around those players. Because, they are low and do you know what, you try doing things when you don’t think you can do it anymore.
They will be convinced now that they are not, because they will read about it, they will see it, they will have to deal with it and until Monday or Tuesday they will still think they are poor players. At the minute I am a poor manager because we haven’t got the results I think we are capable of, so you have to take that thing. But, if you look at what we have achieved, actually we are not all that bad but we are going through a really bad time with it at the minute and we have got to try to put it right.
AW
You say the team are as down as you have ever known them, but what about you?
GA
No, today I am not down, I am not down. I am probably as tough and as defiant today because they need me now, I know they need me and hopefully I can convince them to better than they are. But, I was more disappointed last week, now I know we have got to go back to doing it exactly in a way that suits the players we have got. The tough players have to go in and stand and deliver. I am not upbeat, upbeat if you like but I am not on my haunches.
I am about deciding now that that is enough, I have been hit so many times that eventually you have got to stand up and you have got to throw a few back. That is where the dressing room has got to be and that is where I have got to be right now as we speak. There is no point me giving in, if I talk in any different manner or I take too hard on who I am then I am giving in. I am not going to give in, I will not give in.
AW
So, you are quite prepared to take all of the bullets that are coming your way this evening and shoulder them?
GA
Yeah, absolutely, that is fine by me. But, I will tell you what, I am going to fire some back when we get some success again, and we will. I genuinely believe we will and I will fire some back. That is in a nice way and I know that when we fire them back and they are warranted that that is what the fans want.
They don’t want us to be like this, they don’t want to go home like this and calling me this and calling me that. I think they probably want to go home with a 3-0 win and thinking we are doing alright. But, you have to take what is coming off a game like that, no qualms whatsoever, but I will load my gun.