BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

Alex Neil aired his frustrations at Tuesday's draw with Burton, and explains how he's trying to fix issues on the pitch. The Head Coach also claimed that Jack Clarke is working his way into the gaffer's plans...

LEARNING

“I'm learning more about the group every day."

EXTR DEFENDER

“One of the things which was a constant tonight, which was a concern for me, we changed the shape to get an extra defender behind the ball to make sure we didn't get countered on and we did countered on. That was extremely frustrating because by putting that extra defender in, you hope to safeguard against that but some our quality and some of our decision making really let us down."

MOMENTUM

“First 30 minutes, I thought the balance of our play was good but then one moment changes the game. Their striker gets the ball, turns it around the corner and they get in behind us. To be fair, apart from the lad's poor touch that could have been a real problem for us. That then totally changed the momentum. I don't know if it's the youthfulness of the squad, not coping with those type of moments, we just don't react well."

FRUSTRATING

“It's so frustrating because we probably had ten moments, they had one and it was that one that totally changes the match. We had a good discussion at half time then the goal sums it. We collect the ball, punt it up when we're 5v3 in our own half, and within the two passes they get a shot on our goal. It's absolutely naivety, we don't do the basics well enough and it's as simple as that.”

STRUCTURE

"We lost the game on Saturday because of two transitions against us. At this moment in time, that is a real problem for us. So you can either fix it structurally, and to be honest we were in the right positions on Saturday, we just didn't defend well enough, and even tonight we had enough behind the ball to deal with it really."

SLOPPY

“The one where the young lad comes on up front and gets through, we've got 2v1. They just clear the ball and within two touches he's running through on goal. That should not happen at any level really, never mind this level. It's decision making. The problem we've got is, we've spoken about lads who have played too much football, when you're fatigued it affects everything you do. Your decision making on and off the ball becomes sloppy, you start to gamble because you don't want to run, and you get caught out of position."

SEARCHING

“I thought tonight as well, you could see that when we were searching for a goal towards the end of the pitch and it becomes stretched, we don't look as if we can get about the pitch enough to make that count."

SOLUTIONS

“There's a few things that certainly need fixing. I need to find solutions and I'm trying to do that. I changed it again tonight to see if we could go about in a different way, but the same issues are still rearing their head. It's back to the drawing board for me, and I need to try and come up with something that can give us a platform to go and win the games.”

JACK CLARKE

"If we had played a different shape than Jack would have had a great claim to play. Tonight we played with two centre forwards and I've only got two in the building at the moment. The wingers suffer off the back of that, and Lynden [Gooch] is probably the one best suited to play in that sort of wing-back role. That's why we went down that route.”