Jacko’s thoughts after the Bristol City home defeat
Town’s recent run of good form came to a halt as the Greenhous Meadow jinx once again kicked in and Town fell to a home defeat.
It was a really open attacking game between two clubs at the wrong end of the League 1 table but it was Bristol City who took the early advantage with a great finish from Emmanuel-Thomas.
Town hit back quickly with a superb 30 year drive from skipper Tamika Mkandawire to see the game level at half-time. The second saw Bristol once again edge in front with Mkandawire this time unlucky to concede an own goal, Town once again hit back with a lovely header from Paul Parry following great work from Dave McAllister. But it was another defensive lapse that allowed City to edge back in front and there they stayed despite Town having a number of decent chances to level.
After the game manager Mike Jackson was asked for his thoughts on the game:”It’s disappointing, you look at the goals we’ve given away today and they have been poor.
“The first one has come in from a throw in, the second is a mistake and an own goal and the third is from a set-play. To be fair for their first goal the lad has hit it well and it’s a good goal but we should have done better.
“You always try to take things from the game and our attacking was better and there was fight to come back from going behind twice.
“When it was back to 2-2 I felt we were in the ascendancy and there was only one team going to go on and win it but then you hand them something like that and then they just shut up shop.
“We continued to have some good chances from then on, corners, set plays, but it just didn’t go in for us today.”
Overall with the balance of play and chances created Jacko felt that his side should have taken at least a point:”I felt we did deserve something, the two front men worked well and that was credit to them.
“Anyone watching would see we deserved something, some might say not as we let in three goals and I could go along with that to a certain extent but over the whole game I believe we did deserve something.”
A defeat was always going to be hard to take but especially after Town’s recent run of form which has seen draws against Port Vale and Coventry and a win away to Notts County:”It is consistency, and before the game I wrote on the board ‘fine margins and detail’, the detail is doing your jobs for 90 minutes and making sure you do the basics. That is the difference when you are playing games like this; the team that does more of those things right will win the game.”
The result has once again made the Sky Bet League 1 table tough reading for Town and their supporters but with a busy run of games that sees Town playing a lot of teams around them and a few wins could make it look a lot more rosy:”You look at the league table now and we are four points from safety but it is still in our own hands.
“We have Crawley here on Tuesday and then we play eight of the teams in the bottom twelve going from Bradford downwards.
“There are plenty of points to play for but we’ve got to make sure that we start to take some of those points back.”
A lot of fans at the game and on social media were calling for substitutions to be make but the Town manager was happy with the performances being shown out on the pitch:”I thought Sam and Miles were doing alright and were a threat, Paul Parry is always a threat and he can score.
“I wanted to keep as many attacking options on the pitch; we put Jermaine on and pushed him up there just in case we needed to get the ball into that area.
“Boz and Mendez went on but we just didn’t do enough in that final bit of the game, we pushed and pushed but just didn’t get that little break to go for us.
“Sometimes you can make substitutions for the sake of it, sometimes you have to look at what people are doing and today I think we made the right decisions on this.”
The focus now turn’s to Tuesday’s visit of Crawley Town to the Greenhous Meadow and another chance for Jacko’s team to get thing back on track:”It has disappointed them and so it should, it should disappoint you to lose because if it doesn’t you shouldn’t be playing.
“I’ll be disappointed but I know once I get tonight out of the way I’ll be looking towards Tuesday and putting everything into that.
“I’ve said before that these games were never going to go smoothly and there would be ups and downs because it’s been like that all season.
“We went three games unbeaten and we’ve got to make sure we now go on another run of unbeaten games starting from Tuesday.
“The good thing about football is that there is another game coming quickly and we’ve got to prepare for that and get back on track and move on from today.”