Head coach Scott Brown spoke to the media after his side’s narrow loss to Charlton Athletic on Saturday afternoon at The Valley.
The game started out well with Jayden Stockley putting the Cods into the lead early on, but a goal on either side of the half from the hosts meant they would keep the three points from the day in SE7.
After the game, this is what the gaffer had to say:
His summary of the game as a whole…
“We controlled large periods of the first half and was the better team going into half-time, even though we switched off for one moment when someone made a mistake and got punished with their one shot on target.
“Second half, they started more eagerly than we did and went forward with a bit more positivity and that’s what Roons [Shaun Rooney] switched off and let [Corey] Blackett-Taylor in behind – one mistake after another at this moment in time.
“We’ve got to take responsibility as well, but we have to take this on the chin. We’re all in this together, this is part and parcel of being a manager, and we’ve got to stick together. That last 25 minutes, when we switched off, we’re offering them opportunities for them to score against us.”
On not being ruthless enough…
“They didn't know how to deal with us in the first half, but we need to be more ruthless, I say this every week. You’ve got to get in behind and cause problems, but we aren’t picking out the right passes, seem to panic, and then we get counter attacked.
“That’s the difference in quality, Alfie May gets in there and scores, we’ve not got that bit of quality in our final third. We don’t know what’s in Jack Marriott’s mind at this time so that’s a slight problem – we need to make sure he’s back on the park because he can affect games.
“We need to make sure we’ve got all the lads raring to go, we’ve got six or seven bodies missing, which is hard, so we’re having to fight against that but still, we should still have enough to go and win that game.”
On the new additions on deadline day…
“We want strength in depth in the squad and the board have been kind enough to give us two extra players just before the end of the window so hopefully that's us all set. Everyone’s set in the fact that they’re here until January and we’ll go from there.
“The new additions will help freshen things up; they’ll compete for places as we now have the opportunity to have four fit strikers on the park at one time and we need them to just score the goals now.
“Once everyone is back, the squad is strong, but we need to make sure that everyone is back and fit. As I say, these lads have got to look after their bodies but at the same time, we’ve got to stay on top of them too.”