John Ward On The Hartlepool Defeat

Last updated : 29 October 2008 By Thetashkentterror

John Ward
United manager John Ward spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's Derek Lacey after Carlisle's 1-0 loss at home to Hartlepool, Ward suggesting that he has been moving players around in an effort to freshen things up :


" We didn't have the conviction of our play really, we set out to obviously be hard to beat because we have been easy to beat in recent games. That was reasonably the case in terms of the first-half, but it is their one shot on target, they have scored within the first period which is how things are happening for us at the minute. We still lack that conviction with our passing and our running though, and just that bit of confidence of making something happen, and it didn't happen obviously.

" I don't think that I should be talking about my job at this moment. I am very upset and very disappointed about a lot of things, and you say the right things and the wrong things. I will talk to you about the game, I am disappointed with that. There is a lack of conviction around the team at the moment and it spreads through a little bit doesn't it.

" That is the one thing that we have got to try to eradicate and put to bed. We need to get that break somewhere, if Danny Graham had been able to put that chance away then we would have been talking differently I guess. I have said that in previous games though, we are not playing well and we are not playing with that belief that we saw right at the beginning of the season and we saw right the way through last year. It is similar people, similar players, and we need to improve it obviously.

" He (Jennison Myrie-Williams) gave us that injection of pace where he can attack people and go at people. He did that pretty well without getting the end product that we were requiring but he did lift the game up, it lifted the supporters. The introduction of Scott Dobie as well, it just opened us up a little bit, maybe to one or two breaks that Hartlepool pressed on. We were pushing the team forward though to try to get that elusive goal and obviously it didn't happen. "



" The margins are pretty narrow in winning and losing but they are so great in terms of the result. That is how people get affected, if is the biggest word in football isn't it. It is what actually happens, we didn't score again, we have gone three games without getting a goal and we have not looked as if we are going to score a lot of goals in the game, but we set up to be solid.

" Obviously we are disappointed with the first goal going in but we have then had to open up a little bit. We still haven't, there is nothing else I can say other than that we didn't have that conviction of passing, running and playing and that we were going to get something. I think that we were a bit hopeful instead of being determined that it was going to happen or that we were going to make it happen.

" He (John Welsh) is a steady player isn't he, we put him in that position, he has just met the guys tonight at 6.15pm and he is obviously a new face to a lot of people. David Raven knew him from his Liverpool days and (Graham) Kavanagh had played against him not so long ago actually.

" So he knew one or two but we asked him, I brought him in this morning and talked to him about the position and he was happy to do that. I felt that it probably settled him in rather than saying that there is this job or that job when he didn't know people around him. He is a steady footballer though, he is a steadying influence and we certainly need something like that. "



" I think that they (Simon Hackney and Cleveland Taylor) have been playing below their pace and they are not the only ones of course. In the last couple of games though they have affected the way that I have gone about the game tonight in my view. Freshen them up, maybe they will come back at the weekend, maybe they will feel better for coming out and that is something that I have got to try.

" I don't want to keep making changes but the way I am watching my games I have got to keep trying something new, something different, something fresh if we can get it in there. It tends to unbalance things a little bit but at the same time we are not getting the results the way that we have been going. Simon and Cleve are good players but they need to be a little more solid than perhaps their recent games have been giving us.

" When you are picking the team you are trying to come up with something that can distract if you like from the feeling that is going around the place. Because we are all pretty disappointed, supporters, players, myself, everybody is a bit down. So we just switched the system around, it is something that we have done before but we said to go and do that.

" To give different people different jobs, if you like, say that is the job that you can do and they are capable of doing them, whether or not we have got to make some big decisions that obviously people will disagree with. You have got to make decisions that give the players something else to think about though, rather than if we can win or are we going to do this. "



" At least we tried to be positive in that respect, saying that this is the job that you have got to do, and we spent a long time on the training ground yesterday, you saw us do that. We have conceded, which obviously we don't want to do and then when it goes differently then you have to change it again. So we keep trying, and we'll keep working at Saturday and give it some thought to see what we can do.

" I am not going to talk about my position at all tonight (repeated three times to three seperate questions from James Phillips in the studio), I don't think that is the right thing to do. I will talk to you about the game, I understand people there, emotions are high the same as mine, but I am not going to talk about my position tonight.

" Jennison (Myrie-Williams) would have played on Saturday except he had a back spasm in the warm-up as you saw. He would have been in the frame today, there were not any doubts about him but it was whether or not he could get through 90 minutes. He is an impact player as I have said before and we got the 30-35 minutes out of him, where the 90 minutes was possibly a little bit uncertain because of what happened to him on Saturday. The position that Danny Carlton was in is something that he has played before.

" It is unusual to hear people clapping us off because generally you hear the dissenters louder than others. So I am pleased about that and I thank the people that were able to do that, so hopefully we can repay you very quickly. We are trying hard to do that and I know that at the moment you are really feeling as bad I am, but when we get it right then we can enjoy it together. "