Assistant Coach looks back at the Walsall game
Shrewsbury Town’s Youth Team Assistant Coach, Matt Rains, believes his side were unlucky not to take home at least a point after their 1-0 defeat to Walsall on Saturday.Town started the game brightly and dominated the opening period, but Walsall scored the only goal of the game with 15 minutes remaining to take the win.
Rains looked back on a game of two halves.
“Overall, the result’s disappointing,” Rains told ShrewsWeb.
“Performance first half we were extremely pleased with, so that is a positive. We passed the ball extremely well without breaking them down and creating too much, but second half we didn’t replicate that performance.
“A little bit sloppy on the ball, let Walsall back into the game and the goal’s disappointing as well that we’ve conceded with one ball over the top.
“But, it’s a learning day for the boys. It’s about how to handle a good performance first half and then trying to replicate it second half, which is sometimes extremely tough because the opposition are always going to talk at half time about how to stop the team playing so well.
“So, the boys have got to learn from today and they’ve got to make sure that when the situation arises again, they take extra care in the second half when they perform so well first half on the ball.
“The detail in possession, the focus on the ball and the focus off the ball has got to be even higher than it was in the first half otherwise you get punished.”
Rains was pleased with the first 45 minutes where Town dominated the ball without creating too many clear cut chances.
“They dropped off us and we passed the ball extremely well,” said Matt.
“We created a couple of openings, but the movement off the ball probably just needed to be a bit better to find that key to unlock the door.
“But, we kept the ball extremely well and we’re pleased with the quality at times as well. It’s just that learning that we can take from today into training next week that if we are having so much of the ball, how can we create our chances against a team that put 8 or 9 players behind the ball?
“We’ve got to look at that as staff and we’ve got to work with them in the week and then we’ve got to look at the second half as well and find out what changed, why weren’t we as effective?”
Town struggled to get to the pace of the game second half and Matt hopes the team learn from their mistakes.
“We will watch it back and review it,” Rains said.
“What we spoke about at half time was that our focus needs to go up, our attention to detail when we’re keeping the ball. We spoke about how we might create a chance with a little bit of movement from the strikers.
“Wide players are important in trying to feed them and get crosses in, but for one reason or another it didn’t materialise. We’ve got to analyse it and we’ve got to make sure these boys learn from it.”