Town Head Coach Luke Williams addressed the local media in the wake of his side’s 1-0 defeat away at Bury earlier today. Here are the key points from what he had to say…
ON BURY’S PENALTY:
“It was given for contact inside the box which is astonishing because in every penalty box in the whole world and every single football pitch from Sunday League to the Champions League, everyone is contacting each other inside the box.
“It is not a grapple, it is contact and then release. Why we get punished for a penalty is beyond me and it is staggering to be honest.”
ON THE RESULT AND PERFORMANCE:
“The performance wasn’t good enough because we didn’t win. Lawrence Vigouroux had one save to make in 90 minutes of football and we had nothing too clear until later on in the game in terms of chances.
“Charlie Colkett would have expected to score from the position he was inside the box and when James Brophy breaks into the box and has a chance to square it to three targets, he should square it at one of them clean and they should put it into the back of the net.
“I don’t think it is too much to ask or it is too unrealistic for the players with their quality and talent.
“If you don’t do that then you don’t deserve to win.
“It is not good enough not to put the ball into the back of the net when chances arise.
“I felt for sure that we really tried to attack in a controlled manner and we kept trying to build a controlled attack so that we could be secure behind it and I felt that we done that well enough.
“But when the ball falls to you inside the box and you’ve got the goal to look at and the ball at your feet, then you need to score.”
ON LLOYD JONES MISSING OUT:
“It was an extremely difficult decision and Lloyd is very unfortunate that we needed to bring a more physical midfield player onto the pitch and the only way we could do that was by removing a loan player because of the rules.
“Lloyd has been ever-present for us, he’s been a fantastic servant and he stood up to challenge after challenge and we feel very strongly that he’s a valuable part of the squad.”
ON ROHAN INCE MAKING HIS TOWN DEBUT AND DION CONROY MAKING HIS FULL DEBUT:
“Rohan Ince gave us that physical edge that we probably have been lacking at times and I thought he did that well.
“He tried to make good, clean passes in the build-up to try and give the attacking players a chance to mount an attempt on goal.
“Dion Conroy was very aggressive, very, very comfortable on the ball and I think he should be pleased with his day’s work.”
ON LUKE NORRIS’ INJURY:
“Luke pulled something and felt that he had a chance and came here and did a fitness test before kick-off.
“We were instructed to put the team sheet in first to allow ourselves plenty of time to have a thorough fitness test.
“But as soon as Luke struck a ball he felt something and it would have been ridiculous to have a 19-man squad and not to use it.
“We won’t know the extent of the injury until we get back to Swindon and assess it.”
ON JON OBIKA:
“Jon wasn’t able to play 90 minutes and was a risk to start the game. There are no problems and we really hope now that he can be in contention to start games.”
ON BRANDON ORMONDE-OTTEWILL:
“He came through training fine and played for the Reserve team so I hope now that he will be ready to feature if we need him to.”
ON DROPPING INTO THE RELEGATION ZONE:
“It is horrendous to be in that situation and we need to get out of there as quickly as possible.”
ON PICKING THE TEAM:
“I took the team for training and picked the side and formation and I will do that for as long as I’m asked to.”
