Steve Cotterill reflects on Town's defeat away at Doncaster Rovers.
Shrewsbury Town lost narrowly at the Keepmoat Stadium on Saturday afternoon after Joseph Olowu’s 79th-minute header secured the points for the hosts.
Town's manager Steve Cotterill was disappointed with the result and felt his team looked tired, but should have done better with the goal.
On the performance:
“[It was] no more than average really. We looked tired today, had no spring in our step. We did okay at times in the game. As the game goes on, we made a mistake before the corner, and then all of a sudden, you’re thinking ‘we need to clear this one.’ We’ve had chances today and if we take those chances, we win by four, but we weren’t sharp today. We looked like it’d been a long week we couldn’t get to grips with having a bit more speed in our play today.
“We had enough [chances] in the first half. [There were] a few balls where we decided to set players in the box rather than take a touch and striking through the ball; I don’t know why we’ve decided to do that, we’ve done that on a couple of occasions when we don’t need to. I think that their keeper did make a couple of saves but we had a couple of opportunities where we could’ve given him no choice on making a save.
“Poor goal [to concede]. I mean what you have to bear in mind when that happens is that the team is getting smaller and smaller by the week in terms of size. We’ve done very well with our zones for a long, long time and this is the first game we’ve had a hiccup in them. I think if we get first contact on that then it ends up being nil nil and it’ll peter out and that was what was decisive today. From our set plays, we weren’t sharp enough when the ball was delivered – and there was nothing too much wrong with the deliveries today – but we weren’t sharp enough to take up those opportunities.”
