Despite his side’s habit of reducing arrears this season — and the fact they weren’t far off doing it again on New Year’s Day at Bromley — Daryl McMahon believed his side gave themselves no chance of recovery for their 20 minutes of madness in the first-half on Monday night. “It’s a performance that’s come out of leftfield that I don’t think anybody envisaged happening,” he told BBC Radio Kent’s Charles Webster. “Conceding goals so close together, you’ve got no chance at this level if you concede three goals by half-time, absolutely no chance.”
And the Fleet boss will not be moving on immediately from his side’s defeat at Bromley as he’ll be using it in preparation for what’s to come in 2018.
“You can’t just forget about it,” he explained. “Because a lot of poor things happened tonight and you have to learn from it to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And then you have to get on that training ground to get ready for Saturday. [Chester] are a side who are fighting for their lives, who I’m sure will be at home tonight thinking, ‘I quite fancy them Saturday’.
“We’ll watch the game again. I think the players need to watch the game again. I think that’s important, that they can watch themselves and see what everyone else has seen. Sometimes when you play you don’t quite see it as everyone else does and it’s important we see it – not as a punishment but to eradicate errors. I’m always one for that and we’ll learn from it.”
And McMahon refused to blame the hectic festive schedule for his side’s performance. “It is what it is, it’s the same for all teams,” he said. “We’ve got an illness in the camp and we’ve got one or two back from injury, etc. Dave Winfield’s been great and got back quick but he looks tired, he’s had a lot of games, we’ve put him under a lot of pressure and he probably needs a couple of days off but it is what it is.”
“We lost the game in the first half. The game was over at half-time especially as we started all right. We moved the ball really well and then it went to pot. We conceded three really poor goals, second half we could have got back into it but conceded another unbelievably soft goal. If you defend like that you don’t deserve to win any games of football. We didn’t defend and that’s not something you can throw against us very often. We’re normally very good there but you can’t dress it up. It was a poor performance.
“I was looking forward to the game. Luke Coulson had a great chance. We got in and around their back four a couple of times, then we conceded that first goal and were pretty poor for the next, 10-15 minutes, or whatever the timing was for their three goals. Goals change games but you can’t melt when you concede one goal and we did today.”
Listen to full interview below.
https://soundcloud.com/eufcofficial/daryl-mcmahon-post-bromley
