“We probably needed that performance to be honest, rather than getting the punch in the face when the season starts, you get it here instead against a good side that put a press on us that we didn’t deal with too well. In the first ten minutes I thought we were outstanding and then after they put the press on us we became predictable and boring, similar to the bad points in the Dunston game. We had to fix it at half time and to be fair to the lads they did. Bringing a young lad on in Callum Bone gave us that bright spark, making things tick, and we’ve got to have that. But again, I wasn’t happy at all with the 35 minutes of the first half, it was nowhere near the standards and we looked lost in the middle of the park, and didn’t use our strengths, not using Chappy, Dom, Jovan enough, you want the ball in and around your attack and we weren’t getting it there quick enough. Of course some of that was down to Darlington’s tactics, the high press, but when we realise people are doing a high press we’ve got to go in behind and we just never did that enough in that period.
“People probably got scared when I came in and I said I was going to look at the lads in the academy, but I saw what they were capable of. Will they be ready straight away? Callum has certainly shown that he is but we’ve got to not expect too much too soon, he’s a really, really talented player, but for now we just have to let him play his game and he is, and it’s great having a kid like that who’s not afraid to do that. It’s a great talent he has. Other lads have done really well too, Ollie Thompson did well when he came on, Lucas Lowry’s done well in preseason, Ben Williams’s done really well since he’s been in with me. I’m really, really impressed with the young kids that have come through. But when I look at that midfield, we still haven’t got quite the right midfield set-up. Lots of options, but we still need a couple more, definitely another midfielder in there, I thought Fitzy when he came on was a bright spark again and he works ever so hard, Connor Pani again has had another good game, so some of the lads who have come off the bench were really good and improved the game for us. But I’m still disappointed with the 35 minutes of that first half, when you look at what we can be, how we played on Tuesday, the speed, the dynamics, it just wasn’t there for some of tonight.
“I watched us on Tuesday night and I think that was a good representation of how good we can be, especially if I can add a couple of players. We’ve got through preseason with just the one injury in Newton, which on the whole is pretty good for a preseason.
“I think preseason’s gone really well, we had the blip when we were at Donny, but if you watch that game you wouldn’t believe how well they played, they were fantastic. They had nine shots, scored seven, and the energy was fantastic. And it was an eye-opening thing for the lads I think it helped them massively, it scared a few people because we were miles away from where we wanted to be but it’s preseason, you always have a little blip in preseason and you’d rather have it earlier on then you can fix it than at the last bit. Same with today, rather have that blip during the game than next week. The lads are in a good place at this moment in time. If you go in here and dominate ninety minutes, do we learn anything from it? Probably not. So, we’ve learnt a lot from today and we’ll manage to tweak it and we managed to tweak it and get the result that was required.”
