Jacko's thoughts after the defeat away to Preston North End
Town's slight hopes of survival were dealt another big blow with a 5-2 defeat away to play-off bound Preston North End.
It was a makeshift Town side that lined up and it had to counter a lot of early Preston pressure. They did this and just as it looked like they were making a foot hold in the game and had started to quieten the home crowd they conceded two quick goals.
A Shaun Miller game goal gave Town a faint glimmer of hope to take into the second half but in the end Preston were just too strong in the second half and ran out easy winners.
After the game manager Mike Jackson spoke to the press to give his thoughts on the game:”I think sometimes you hold your hands up when you get beaten by the better team and that happened today.
“It was a patched up side today in terms of personnel and we had to try something a little different at the start of the game, we had to change it after 10 to 15 minutes as it wasn't working.
“After that we steadied ourselves down a little but then gave another couple of soft goals away and then the fear and uncertainty starts to creep in.
“In the second half to be fair to the players they had a go and that's all you can ask for, though the big disappointment was people not winning the 50/50 balls and coming out second best, for a team at the bottom fighting for their lives that shouldn't happen.
“If you get beaten by a side because they have better quality then you, are better at passing and playing than you fair enough but you shouldn't be losing your 50/50 balls.”
Town's performance at times dropped and this allowed Preston to exert their dominance. Jacko was asked if he thought his players looked resigned to the defeat at times:”I think there were a couple like that, there is a young squad out there today and some have come up short in experience and know-how against a really good Preston side full of experience.
“It's a learning curve for some of them but it's not a good learning curve for the club because their club is in the mire at the moment.
“This club is really up against it now, it's not mathematically certain but we now need to win two games and hope everyone else needs to lose there’s.
“I'll never say it's over until it is, it is going to be unbelievable hard but we've got to do better than we have done today.
“We will go again next week as we owe it to the fans, they were good again today and I feel for them at this moment in time.”
At half-time Jacko made a couple of changes to bring on Paul Parry and Tom Eaves to replace Tom Bradshaw and Aaron Wildig. It raised a few eyebrows on social media at half-time but there were good reasons for the changes:”We started with a couple of the quicker lads up front and Jon Taylor in behind them with the aim of keeping the ball up the pitch but it wasn't working.
“We needed something physical up there so we brought Eavsey on to try and give us that strength.
“Aaron Wildig was struggling with his calves, he was knackered so we had to change it and Paul Parry adds us that experience.”
Going into the Tranmere and Crewe game Town's hopes were high that results against those teams could see Town pull away from the relegation places. In fact three straight defeats have now made Town's League 1 survival a big question:”I think the Tranmere game was a big blow to lose it in the final 5 minutes and that has affected us.
“We have performed at times against Crewe but not in the final third and have got done off two set plays.
“That has carried over into today's game but that doesn't make anything better and it is disappointing that we didn't make more of a go of things in the Crewe and Tranmere games.”
Town now prepare for their next game the visit of Peterborough to the Greenhous Meadow, Jacko was asked if he had a message for the fan's:”I hope the fans do come and give the team the backing as we will doing our very best to make sure that the team give them a performance like we did against Stevenage.”