Shrewsbury Town 3-2 Port Vale reaction – I’ll take the blame…
Here’s the post-match reaction to Saturday’s five goal thriller…
Darrell Clarke
I’ll take the blame; I picked a technical team, we started the game on the front foot and scored a very good goal but we were weak at set-pieces and that is what cost us the game – three set pieces.
We orchestrated our own downfall; it is not that the players hadn’t been warned about it, they’d scored eight from their last 13 goals from set-plays so it wasn’t like we hadn’t worked on it, but you have to do the fine arts and basics of the game right and we didn’t do that.
We win the game if defend set-pieces and second phases but we couldn’t do that. With that and Butterworth, Robinson and Politic in the team, you lose some inches in height and you get punished for it so I take the blame for that.
It is a big learning curve for these players and certainly our young players; you can look as good as you want on the ball, but if you don’t do the basics of the game and defend set-pieces from second and third phases then you get beat, and we got beat and they have to learn that.
It is not about effort, attitude or application, it is about us not defending set-pieces today. It is as simple as that.
On new signing Matty Taylor:
Matty is doing very well and he had a very good, positive session yesterday. Matty wasn’t quite ready for today but we are hoping for Tuesday night. I am led by my medical team – which is superb; we always knew it might be the case with Matty missing two or three games when we signed him but it was late on Deadline Day and we knew he would be a great acquisition for us when he is back and fit, but he will only play when he is fit.
Jamie Proctor
We’ve only got ourselves to blame, we spoke all week about set pieces, and the number of goals they have scored over the past few weeks from set-pieces.
We start the game so well, score a great goal, looked comfortable and our shape was working well. Three set-pieces just takes the game away from us; we can do all we can in the second-half to give it a go, but you concede three goals like that, it’s just uphill from the start.
I think that’s the most frustrating part, we bang on all the time about how much work the staff do, and how much work the lads do on the training ground on the opposition. We go into every single game knowing exactly how the opposition are going to play, we know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and we knew that today. When you get beat by information you know, that’s the toughest thing to take, I think.
Steve Cotterill
At the end of the day it is just all credit to the boys, I think they deserve a lot of credit for how they apply themselves. When you have two of your back three sat in the stands as well I always felt we might concede, when you disrupt a back three with two-thirds of it not playing it is very difficult.
I always felt they could score today, not just because it was Port Vale but whoever we had played against because you are chucking a back three together again. And they did really really well today, changing it around it is can be very difficult.
The boys showed what they show every week which is a great character, great determination, and when you look at it, we had some good chances as well to score more than three goals. But we will take the 3-2 win, they beat us over at their place 2-1 but we will take the win here.