Reaction From Cherries Boss Kevin Bond

Last updated : 01 October 2007 By Thetashkentterror

Cherries boss Kevin Bond
Bournemouth manager Kevin Bond spoke to BBC Radio Solent on Saturday evening as he talked about his side's 3-1 defeat at home to Carlisle earlier in the afternoon, Bond bemoaning the injury list at the Fitness First Stadium :


" It was extremely difficult today, if you give the goals away that we are giving away at the moment then you are always going to make it difficult for yourself. I thought that we were as a much of a threat to them as they were to us. More so in the second-half where I thought that their goalkeeper pulled out three or four fantastic saves in fairness to him. We've shot ourselves in the foot though by conceding, giving the ball away in horrific areas and individual errors cost you, you can't do it.

" In fairness with the injuries that we have got we've had to put a makeshift back-four together and too often you do find yourselves exposed. When you do that type of thing, and they certainly did that today, we brought about our own downfall with those individual errors and it does cost you.

" You live and die by the decisions that you make, I put my faith in him (Asmir Begovic) at the start of the season. I've worked hard with him when I was at Portsmouth, I think he's going to be an outstanding goalkeeper, I think he's a very good goalkeeper now. Circumstances dictated with the situation, which I won't go into at the club, I decided to bring him into the club and I decided to give him his chance.

" In fairness over the last couple of games and he'll be the first to admit that when you make those mistakes as a goalkeeper they generally cost you goals and they have us. I'll be hopefully looking at that situation for Tuesday night and he'll understand that. It's no consolation to me whatsoever how well their goalkeeper played, to a degree because of the circumstances that we find ourselves in at the club you know that you are taking chances.

" You're playing Marc Wilson at left-back and he's not really a left-back, he's coped with it before in the past for us and he's played in a number of positions. We brought him in because we were short of bodies, we wouldn't have been able to bring him in if Portsmouth hadn't agreed to pay his wages. You beg, borrow and steal to bring people in, you have to play them out of position because of circumstances and you do get exposed.

" You're not meaning to take chances but you have to put square pegs sometimes in round holes and hope that they can do a job, today it exposed one or two. We've played Shaun Cooper who played reasonably well today but Shaun Cooper isn't fit, he shouldn't really be being asked to play first-team games at this moment in time because of the amount of training he has missed. With the injuries we have got though we've had to bring him back before he is ready. "



" It's the same with Josh Gowling, he got cramp in the last ten minutes, he hasn't lifted a leg in training for the last eight days. So you are having to put people in and with the players that we have got missing it is going to expose you and that is what happened. In some respects you could do without a game for three weeks to try to get one or two back, although I'm not sure that three weeks would bring too many back.

" On the other hand though you don't want to be dwelling on defeats for very long, you'd like another game to come around to focus on. The plus side today is I thought that the front two did well, Max Gradel did ever so well and caused them all sorts of problems. We must have had half a dozen really good chances today, I thought that little Jo Kuffour deserved his goal and we gave them problems, we gave ourselves bigger problems though.

" I can understand the disappointment and frustration of the fans. I can assure you that however bad they are feeling and however disappointed and frustrated they are feeling that it wouldn't come anywhere close to how am I feeling. I don't think that we have played a side this season, well I know we haven't played a side this season who are better than us. That stands for nothing though if you can't beat them and can't pick up results.

" I do understand that but we haven't played one side who I believe have been a better side than us. First of all we found it a problem, and today again to a degree, we found the problem was hitting the back of the net with the chances that we had created. We had a number of them but in fairness to the goalkeeper he pulled out some blinding saves. We have struggled in front of goal, we got one today but whereas we looked reasonably tight at the start of the season and didn't concede too many.

" Really since the Northampton game where we lost three of our main defenders, and obviously since then we lost Josh Gowling last week and Neil Young again this week we've had to sling everyone together. We've shipped goals, that on top of individual errors has cost us dearly. I've absolutely no doubt in my mind that hopefully if we can get our injured players, and/or strengthen we'll do OK.

" There aren't really any options to strengthen at the moment, it's difficult really to be able to bring anybody in. The only way that we can bring people in at this moment in time in this situation is if somebody else wants to pay their wages. Whether that situation changes today I have absolutely no idea but that certainly has been the situation up until now. As a consequence of losing the players that we have lost the truth of the matter is that we have shipped seven goals in the last two games.

" You can't get away with it, people will expose you, even, with all due respect to League One teams. If you are putting a makeshift together side, and if you are making individual errors then you will concede goals and you will lose games. We will work as hard as we can, try to make the changes that we can make if we believe it will help. There is very little that you can do though until one or two come back or you get another couple in. "