Tom Flanagan spoke to the press after Sunderland's heavy defeat at the hands of Portsmouth on Saturday...
OFF DAY
“Maybe you can say it was an off day. But if you want to get to where you want to get to as a team and a player there are no off days."
DELETE THE GAME
“Today is a day that is alongside only one other game that I look at in a Sunderland shirt, where I wish it could be deleted, and that would be Coventry at home."
ALL EYES ON DEFENCE
“When you’re at the back, and you’ve had a bad game as a group – or sometimes even when you don’t have a bad game – to concede four goals everyone’s eyes are on you. You bear the brunt, and that’s the nature of the beast. The manager had some choice words and you’ve got to take it on the chin."
LET DOWN
“We’ve let ourselves down today, and we’ve let the supporters down. It’s infuriating and you try not to lose your temper and do something stupid.”
EMBARRASSING
"It's embarrassing. We've come away sitting in the dressing room and we've got nothing to say, we can't say anything to each other. We just have to look at ourselves."
TURNING POINT
"Really disappointing day and hopefully it's a turning point in the season when we now go six or seven games unbeaten. This hurts us but this has to hurt us, it can't be 'we'll be better next week' because we have set a precedent now.
LEARNING
"A lot of teams will think 'we'll do what Pompey did to them' so it's a big day and we have to learn. People will say we're young, we're this we're that but we are all playing in the team and it doesn't matter what age we are."
WRONG STYLE
"We have been playing so well and have such a good style of football, we believe in it so much, and we almost thought we could just play our style no matter what. It was the wrong day for it, we needed to mix it up and the manager said it in the dressing room before."
BIG GAMES
"We want, everyone wants to go somewhere with something and the further we go and higher we go as a team, the bigger the games, the bigger the occasion, it's all about big games. On Saturday we let ourselves down and people will question our big game ability."
LEVEL HEADED
"We conceded some really childish goals and that is unacceptable but we kept going and hopefully people think we didn't just roll over. Some people will want a couple of late tackles but we have to keep level headed."
AIMS
"We have an aim at the end of the season and it's not lost or over after Saturday, far from it. This one goes to the back of our minds and we'll remember it when we play them next."
DRESSING ROOM
"I spoke in the dressing room afterwards to all the players and said Tuesday night [against Cheltenham] was the game that last season, and the season before that, we draw," he said. "We draw 1-1 or 0-0, and then come here and we win. We have all kind of had a bit of an awakening, so I just felt I'd say something. I wasn't the only one who said something, a few others said stuff because we can't always look on the manager to tell us what to do on the pitch."
BRILLIANCE/ARROGANCE
"That comes down to us. We got our brilliance and our arrogance mixed up on Saturday. We were too arrogant and not brilliant enough, whereas on Tuesday we had the perfect combination and put them to the sword because of our brilliance. On Tuesday we didn't let our arrogance get in the way but on Saturday we went to Portsmouth, they are in a bit of a bad run of form and we want to stick it to them because we want to shut the crowd up and they taught us a lesson."
GILLINGHAM
"Before then, we play Gillingham away next and it's going to be a carbon copy of this [in terms of atmosphere]. In some respects we have time [over the international break] to put it right and go and show the fans and other people who are watching that we can stand up to this."
CONDITIONS
"It was bad that people wanted the game off but there were times - for the third goal, four players run past the ball. It's a terrible goal to give away but the ball is standing still and four players run past it and the referee is saying the ball is still moving. The middle of the pitch was absolutely fine so it wasn't completely waterlogged but there were times when it was comical."
