Michael Doughty pulled no punches when assessing Town’s 4-0 defeat away at Rochdale on Saturday and knows that massive improvements have to be made going forward.
Town had chances in the first-half at the Crown Oil Arena and although they trailed at the break thanks to Joe Bunney’s thumping header, they were still very much in the game.
However, Rochdale’s attack exploded in the second-half and they wrapped up the three points courtesy of Matthew Lund’s close-range effort and a Steven Davies brace.
Doughty, who skippered Town yesterday, was honest when speaking to the press in the wake of the game and admitted that the Reds were simply not good enough.
“I don’t know (what prompted Town’s second-half collapse), all I can say is that I’m very disappointed about it,” he said.
“As players we’ve got to be better and it is something that happens far too regularly. We need to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible.
“Cleary there’s a reoccurring theme that we need to nip in the bud because we lose one goal and it just seems to make our lives difficult and we look very unlikely to get back into the game.
“You have to go through different things in your life to build up that mental strength and judging by some of the ages of the players that we have, that experience is probably quite minimal.
“For the more senior lads who have played a bit more, we have to try and pick everyone up and fortunately and unfortunately we’ve got a game again on Tuesday, so we can’t really dwell on Saturday for too long.
“I’m not going to make any excuses - we weren’t good enough. We deserved to lose the game and we did.
“We have to start making improvements and learning from these mistakes.
“What is baffling for all of us is the range in performances in going from so good to so bad and we are all accountable for that.
“We all have to take responsibility so hopefully some soul searching will be taking place.
“There are too many highs and too many extreme lows and we’ve got to find some middle ground and stay on it for as long as possible because that consistency will win you more games than you lose.”
Doughty was honoured to have captained Town for the very first time yesterday, but admitted that the performance and result against Dale overshadowed the milestone.
“It is something that I’m proud of but it came in difficult circumstances and it was obviously a far from ideal result,” he added.
“I’m absolutely gutted with it.
“But the test of a man is in adversity and we’ve got to try and deal with this. No one is going to feel sorry for themselves because we’ve got to play again on Tuesday and, if we are, then we’re in danger of losing again.
“We’ve got to understand what went wrong but move on from it very quickly.”
