Head Coach Charlie Adam spoke to the media after he made his home debut against play-off hopefuls Derby County at Highbury Stadium.
There were plenty of positives to take for Adam’s men, but goals from Nathaniel Mendez-Laing, James Collins and Conor Hourihane were enough to earn Derby all three points, despite Jayden Stockley reducing the deficit at 2-0.
Here’s what Town’s new boss had to say:
On this afternoon’s result…
“My players gave me everything, I’m proud of what they did out there. Everything we spoke about in the week, they gave me. We have to try and cut out the errors, but I’m proud of what they’ve done, and we have to focus on the positives that we have.
“Everybody makes mistakes, I’ll make mistakes and the players will, but we’ll pick ourselves up and we’ll walk out with our chest held high. After that first-half performance and the opportunities we had, we should take positives from that.
“Today was a great opportunity to test ourselves against one of the best teams in the league, I thought at times we caused them problems. The next goal was key, and we got it, but with Derby’s quality in the last minute or so they end up killing the game off.”
On the efforts given by the players…
“The chances and opportunities that we produced today were top-level in terms of the quality as well. The goal was brilliant and hopefully, that will give [Jayden] Stockley a lot of confidence going forward for the rest of the season.
“I’m happy with what [the players] gave, but we want to win but I think that will come in the next few weeks. There are moments in games when you want to make an impact, that’s the first 15 minutes and the last 5-10 minutes of the first half.
“With the chances we had we should be happy with the progression we made. We made a few last week [against Shrewsbury] and again a few today and hopefully, we’ll start getting the boys in the right positions to score goals.”
On the character and fight shown at Highbury…
“I’ve seen a real spirit and intensity in our play - we have to take that on for the rest of the season. We want to push up the league, we don’t want to be where we are. If we can get that on a consistent basis then we’ll be ok at the end of it.
“I thought we were positive with what we did, the energy of the crowd and the supporters was brilliant, and we have to feed off that. Hopefully, they can go home tonight with a proud feeling in terms of what the players gave them.”
On new players and injured players coming into the squad…
“It was nice to have the boys Promise [Omochere] back in the squad – getting 20 minutes was good for his fitness. You could see when he came on the problems he caused as a big powerful centre forward.
“Ronan [Coughlan] will give us a bit of presence in terms of his running power and strength and he can score a goal, but we’re still trying to get him up to speed Putting him on today was good and we will maybe play him in a reserve game in the week.
“The work that we do in the week will hopefully improve again in terms of what we want to do. The team will improve, the lads will improve, and they’ll start to understand - we’ve given them a lot of information in the last week.”
Supporters can watch the full interview live on iFollow.