Gaffer's thouights after final pre-season game
Manager Micky Mellon was disappointed with some of the individual errors which cost his side in the 4-1 defeat to Scottish Cup holders Hibernian in the final pre-season match but said the game was a useful exercise in helping him make sure his players are ready for next week’s League One opener against MK Dons.Two goals inside the first six minutes – one from former Town man Grant Holt – put the Edinburgh side in command. Jim O’Brien halved the deficit but two more goals saw the Scottish Championship side run out comfortable winners.
But Mellon said the squad will now watch the game back and work on the things that didn’t go to plan.
“I looked at the clock and it was two nil after six minutes and I think if I went through both goals – one was from a set play and a free header and that is a basic of defending,” Mellon told ShrewsWeb.
“The second one Junior slips, the ball is played in and big Holt gets in front of the defender so they are two avoidable goals after six minutes which are disappointing. Playing against a good side like Hibs it is difficult to react from being two nil down.
“I am not going to stand here and say I didn’t think Hibs were better than us today. They moved it better than us. They moved it quicker and slicker and faster.
“The goals that we gave away I am glad are at this time of the year but we know that we need to pass the ball better and defend better and we have stuff we need to work on next week.
“I think the main thing is we need to pass the ball better and have sharper movement and defensively we were poor at times.
“It is all stuff you want to happen now so you can work on it next week.
“It is pre-season and these things happen. You can’t overreact to it but you have to react to it.
“We will work on things next week. There are things we thought we were maybe getting right that we will speak about next week.
“We struggled against the back three again like the Cardiff game and we thought we had sorted that so we will need to look at that and work on that.”
Hibernian were full value for their win which won’t surprise some considering they have already played a handful of competitive games and Neil Lennon’s men were on it from the start.
Mellon said: “They have had three competitive games and are ahead of us but the game was always set up to work on what we will need to work on next week.
“We didn’t want to put us in a position where we win six or seven nothing and not learning anything about the group. We will work forward from this.
“We will watch the game back, cut it up and show the players and work on it next week towards Saturday’s game.
“We need to cut out the individual errors – we’ve had someone fall on the 18 yard box so they are disappointing at any time of the year.”
Town used just 12 players today with Ethan Jones the only man to emerge from the bench and Mellon said this was always the plan to ensure the players that started got a full 90 minutes under their belts.
“We wanted to get people through 90 minutes which is why we let it run because that is the first 90 minutes for a lot of them so we were always going to let it run like that,” he said.
“The bench wasn’t massively important to us tactically we just wanted to get that group 90 minutes.”
Mellon vowed that his team will be ready for the season opener next week and said the squad will work hard during the week to make sure everything is ready before Saturday.
“I went to watch MK Dons yesterday so we know everything we need to know,” he said.
“We know what we need to work on next week in order to move it closer to being ready so we know there is no doubt that work needs to be done next week.
“We will look at the Hibs game and show the players it and learn from things we wanted to try and work today that never quite worked.
“We will be ready.”