Following the 3-1 home defeat against Swansea this afternoon the gaffer gave his thoughts on our first home game of 2023.
BRIGHT START
“Thought we started really really bright, I think when it was eleven v eleven we were very good to be honest. I felt a real intensity about the team and I think they were struggling to get the ball over the halfway line and it felt as if it was going to be a good day for us. Ultimately it turned into a long afternoon against a team with the best possession stats in the league.”
GOOD SIDE
“They're a very good football team, they keep the ball, they haven’t generally got positive results probably because of their ability to put the ball in the back of the net after all the possession they have and if you pick one team to play one man down it wouldn't be these. There's a lot of teams that are more direct and you can deal with a man down because you just have to defend your goal but this team move you around, they keep the ball, they switch it across, they play off the back of your midfield and they are a good side and so it was a difficult afternoon for us and we move on to the next game. Let’s not over-analyse this match, we played a long time with ten men against a good football side and we came out the wrong end of the result but they worked extremely hard and we’ll have better days.”
NOT MUCH TO LEARN
“There's nothing much to take out of it, i think we started out really well, what we worked on all week the product was there. We kept taking it off them and played it around their box, our possession stuff was really good. I felt as if it was going to be a really good day for us and then the incident happened where we were denied a penalty and a few seconds later we had a sending off and so the whole game swung in that moment. As I said they're a good team and to play ten men against them who have such high possession stats is a tough afternoon for us.”
BORO
“Sometimes you might want a game pretty quickly to be honest to get that out of your system but it feels like it’s going to be a long week because the game’s not till Sunday next week. We’ll prepare as we always prepare and we believe, in particularly at home, we give anybody more than a good game and I’m sure it will be a good game, Middlesbrough are in really good form at the moment themselves and it’ll be a big big test for us but one that we should look forward too.”
