Graham Turner's thoughts after the 3-2 defeat at Notts County
Graham Turner felt hard done by that his side had been undone by a late Lee Hughes winner at Notts County this afternoon. The 82nd minute substitution pounced in the box five minutes after his introduction to kill off Town’s challenge in a game that opposition manager Keith Curle described as ‘having everything.’
“The manner in which we conceded the goals is disappointing,” said the Town chief. “I thought Notts County were a good side – the best we’ve played with their movement and passing and we were having problems with them in the first 15 minutes or so. They got a lot of crosses and set plays into our box but I thought we defended them very well and protected Chris quite well with a number of blocks and headers. We came under a lot of pressure during that period so I felt the need to adjust the formation a bit with Terry having to drop deeper and obviously we changed it again at half time. Although I thought we would always come under pressure at times in the second half, I also thought we looked dangerous on the break. It’s criminal to lose the game in the last five minutes away from home. But I’ve got to say that when you examine the goals we’ve played a massive part in our own downfall today. Each of the goals: losing possession, heading back across your own goal and selling the shirts down here, you can’t at this level or any level to defend like that. We were so naive.”
It was suggested to Turner that Mark Wright may have been unlucky with the defensive header that ultimately presented Jeff Hughes with an easy chance to square the game at 2-2 but the manager wasn’t having any of it: “I’m not sure where luck comes into it,” he said, ruefully. “You’ve got to have a look at it, examine it, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is a difficult place to come to and we might well have got a victory, we might well have got a point against a very good side. The mistakes have proved costly for us but again we’ve shown we can go the good sides and do okay. We did well at Sheffield United and again today and Notts County won’t be far off. But although they had a lot of the ball we defended it very well.”
Jermaine Grandison had struck a wonder goal to briefly put Town ahead as it rained goals in Nottingham during a balmy seven minutes which saw the net ripple four times. But defeat took the gloss off it for Turner: “It will be reflected upon in the week and accepted as an outstanding goal but right at the moment it’s meaningless because we’ve lost the game and that’s more important. We had one or two good opportunities to score other goals and both keepers have made one or two good saves. We’re disappointed but we’ll start again on Monday and the players will know they’ve made mistakes after working hard in the game against a good team.”
Graham was happy to prepare for two home games starting next week against Scunthorpe: “Our ground has been kind to us over the past year or so but we’ve stepped up a level so there are no easy games,” he said. “Scunthorpe have signed a few players and Coventry will be a handful but it will be nice to go back to the Meadow and hopefully we can get the right results.”