Manager Gary Johnson gave his reaction to Tuesday night’s 2-1 defeat at Solihull Moors, as United succumbed to their first away defeat since March.
Following Klaidi Lolos’ first goal for the Club ten minutes from time, United had strong penalty appeals waved away in the dying stages, however Johnson acknowledged his side had ultimately left themselves with a little too much to do.
“Obviously when you go 2-0 down with a couple of mistakes, it’s not too clever. You’ve got a mountain to climb, but we nearly climbed it, without having lots of quality. We got the goal back, once again we definitely had a penalty, 100% – people will see that – but once again we haven’t got that.
“But then, like last week, would we have deserved to come away 2-2 – because I felt they were sharper, quicker, and as manager, I’ve got to a) take responsibility, and b) we’ve got to turn the personnel around a little bit as quickly as we can, because at the moment some of them are proving not quite up to this level. I apologise for that because I’m the one that recruits these people, and we didn’t have a lot of time to recruit people. There’s a few out there that aren’t quite at this level unfortunately.
“We’ve got to quickly turn that around. When you’ve had six games, and you’ve had four defeats in those six games, then of course you’ve got to hold your hands up and say ‘how long do we go’? I don’t know how quickly we can turn it around, but I just know that at the moment teams are looking better than us, and I can’t keep making excuses for them. Supporters are still following us, they’ve come all this way again, and I keep on having to apologise to them, and I’ll apologise to them again.
“I’m not down and out, but at the same time I want to be honest, so that when they see things happening, then they’ll know that I’ve told them that it’s going to happen. We just need to build again, unfortunately, because that will upset a few people, but that’s football life.
“Of course we can’t go out and buy somebody for £200,000 – £300,000 like some teams are, and also we can’t afford pay £5,000 or £6,000 a week like some people are doing. We’ve obviously still got to keep the club in business, to have the chance to turn it around.
“We just need to look, and keep looking, and we’ve got to move some people on, which isn’t always easy, because they’re under contract, but some of them will find it difficult to get a group of games in our team.”
Changes in second half personnel saw Marcin Brzozowski replace Mark Halstead in goal, before fellow substitute Lolos threw his side a lifeline with his first goal in United’s colours.
“Mark was ill, we’ve got to check him, because he was really ill at half time. He made a couple of good saves in that first half – he had to, because they’d hit the crossbar, they’d hit the post. He came in and he was definitely ill, so we had bring Marcin in, and that’s why he didn’t play in the second half.
“It’s taken him [Klaidi] a little bit of time to get an intensity to his game, I think he did that today. He was in tears in the week when we had a chat. I just had to get his best game out, he might have got himself another opportunity to have a little run in the team, but at this moment in time we’re not good enough.
Following the defeat, the Gaffer made it clear he is determined to see his team return to winning ways, even if that means some player movement – both in and out of Plainmoor.
“I won’t be making any comments on individuals right now, I’ll have a chat with my staff, and people will know in time who we’re talking about, and who we think we can move on with, and who the ones are that I think we can’t.
“I normally wait 10 games but I can’t wait 10 games at the minute, and I’ve got to try and make two or three signings as quickly as we can, but then it’ll have to be another two or three later, because it’s more than just three that we need to move on
“They’ve got to be available, and they need to want to come down, and we’ve got to make sure we don’t have an U21s team, so we’ve got to be careful of that. If we have a 20-21 year old, then he’s got to show maturity, because at the moment, that’s probably not what we’re showing.”
Despite a hugely challenging opening set of fixtures, Johnson failed to use that as an excuse, with another tough test against Southend just a few days away.
“To be honest, if you’re going to win the league, you’ve got to play well against those teams, and you’ve got to be the best team in the league overall. At this moment in time, we’re a long way away from being that, but I just want to say to our supporters that we’ll try to get them a team as quickly as we can that can put a run in at this level.
“At the moment we don’t look like that, whoever were playing, and you’ve got to have a good chance in all of them really . We’ve had one good 45 minutes – I know it was a good second half against Notts County – but we’ve only had one good proper half of our flowing football game in our six games, so that’s not enough.”