Greg Abbott Talks About His First Defeat

Last updated : 09 September 2007 By Thetashkentterror

Greg Abbott
United caretaker manager Greg Abbott spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's Derek Lacey on Saturday evening as he talked about the disappointing 1-0 defeat at home to Tranmere, Abbott talking about the need for his men to show more quality in their play :


" It hurts, any of the supporters out there think that they are hurting well they aren't hurting as much as me. I don't like losing, not at all so you could say that I'm quite down, not despondent but I am down and it hurts very much. I thought that in the first-half we didn't get on to the second balls, didn't press the game high enough and we had a couple of lapses of concentration. Certainly the goal was a big lapse in concentration where they broke away from the corner.

" We've got to do all those horrible ugly things which we've always talked about. The workrate, the desire and the determination, you have to do that and you have to win those battles and we didn't win them in the first-half I didn't think. Then it was always a task for us in the second-half to break them down which we couldn't do.

" I thought we got a lot of play in the second-half and a lot of head of steam but we just couldn't find that killer ball or that bit of clever play and that's disappointing. That's what I've told the players there, we have to, in this game you get everything that you deserve and I don't think that we deserved to win the game today. Because we weren't clever enough, we didn't have that final ball in and we didn't cause their defence enough problems, in that sense we've got what we deserved which is nothing.

" We did need that extra bit of quality today, we've got it within the squad and we've got it within the club but we didn't show it today. Players have got more ability than that, we have players that can score goals, we've got tremendous finishers but we've got to get that final ball through. We've got to make those chances and create those chances but today we haven't created enough and caused them enough problems. It's there but we've got to find it and get it out somewhere. "



" To be honest I thought that in the first-half we got into some really nice situations with passing the ball but we didn't pass the ball with enough purpose, the balls that really hurt the opposition. It was a little bit square and methodical, but we'll have a look at it and just assess it, it's not a disaster, the world hasn't fallen apart. We'll have a look at the game and have a look at where we can improve which we did after last week's game and the games before. It's no different, I'm not going to get too despondent but we want to have a look at maybe how we can create a few more chances.

" It was a penalty at the end, no danger it was a penalty but listen, I'm not going to stand here and blame the referee. I thought he was rubbish all game to be honest, I didn't think he had a good game from the minute one. He didn't cost us the game though, we cost ourselves the game by not scoring and I'm not going to come up and argue about referees week in and week out. Because they have a difficult job to do and he has made it very difficult today because he wasn't very good.

" We probably needed that, we were probably hoping that the referee would, at last, make a good decision but he didn't, he kept his consistency and kept making bad ones. So with that we end up losing the game but my players have to win the game, not the referee winning or losing the game. It helps when you get one at the end though when you haven't looked like scoring all afternoon and that's about all that I'll say on that one.

" We've got to work harder, our quality on the ball has got to be better, our concentration defensively has got to be better and we've got to get in people's faces harder. We've got to work and work and work and not give anything away, we had a nice little chance to set ourselves up at the top end of the table and we've given it away. We have to work really hard now though, harder even to get that back and get the momentum going again. That's what I'll remind the players of and then obviously we'll work on the play in terms of getting the ball to hurt the defenders and hurt the opposition more than we did today. "