Matt Taylor gave a frank assessment of Town’s defeat to Exeter at St. James’ Park on Saturday afternoon.
Exeter extended their unbeaten run to nine games and stayed second in League Two after goals from Jonathan Forte and Jayden Stockley sealed a 2-0 victory for the Grecians.
Taylor put the result down to wrong decisions made on the pitch, especially in the final third and said that a week of hard work is ahead.
“Ultimately, we made wrong decisions in the final third and if we’re going to give away goals then we have to score them – today we didn’t look like doing so.
“There are a lot of things we have to put right – we’ve got a full week before our next fixture. We expect everybody in the dressing room to be down today but we’ve got another game coming up in seven days’ time.
“All we can do is focus on a good training week and focus on a big home game next week.
“The level of consistency isn’t good enough – as a manager and assistant manager, you can’t play the game for the players. When you cross that white line, you have to stand up and be counted. Consistency is a difficult thing and something that the higher up you go the players tend to be better at it.
“We’ve got to find a greater level of understanding between each other because at time we’re passing when we should be shooting, and shooting when we should be passing. We’ve got a period to try and work at it at the training ground.
“We’ll be working very hard this week – that’s one thing I can assure everybody.”
When asked where the team fell short on the day, Taylor’s answer was simple.
“In both boxes. I know it’s an easy thing to say but the game for them was won in our box. For us, we huffed and puffed a lot but we didn’t take our chances – I think, overall they had four chances and scored two goals and that’s why they are where they are.
“Unfortunately, we are mid-table at the moment. We’re upset conceding any goal so let’s not stand here and point fingers at individuals. As a team we win, and we lose as one too.
“We’re extremely disappointed with the result today. We weren’t good enough – we made too many wrong decisions. The truth of the matter is that we didn’t make enough right decisions and it really is as simple as that.
“Changing the formation is irrelevant. Formations simply give you a structure – players don’t stay in those formations during the 90 minutes of football, that’s a reality.”
