Steve Morison gave a honest post-match reflection after defeat against Rochdale.
A second half Mani Dieseruvwe goal was the difference between the Dale and the U’s, who fell to a third defeat in a row despite a positive, hard-working performance at the Crown Oil Arena.
“I thought we performed well first half, obviously we had to get as many fresh legs on the pitch as possible. They rested their whole team away at Brackley on Saturday, so I needed to get as many fresh legs and to be fair I thought Mo Dabre, on his first debut, 45 minutes, was excellent, he does everything he does every day in training and he’s earned that.
“We had to we had a couple of moments where they could maybe could have got a goal, but that’s just football, one slight decision or one one slight error and you can get punished, but yeah on the whole the first half was was pretty even as it was 0-0, we had a couple of moments ourselves which we didn’t quite take and then second half, yeah, it’s tough to take because they get the goal which is, spawns its way into the back of the net but it’s a good bit of movement from the centre forward and he gets a touch and then it’s just one-way traffic for the rest of the half and at the minute we can’t put a ball in the back of the net.”
“Hugely, hugely disappointed, highly emotional, tired, and yeah, it’s not good enough at the minute. From myself, I feel sorry for the rest of the staff. I feel sorry for people like Jon Meeney, Kyri [Neocleous], Sean [Miles], Cat [Chambers], Luke [Silavwe], Graham [Cowell], worked their absolute socks off every day; Tatts, everyone and we’re just not giving them enough at the minute. I know they’re tough games and we said it right at the start of the season. It’s like someone didn’t like us when they were doing a fixture list and they picked most probably the top first six games, we’ve played the first four or five teams with the biggest budgets in the league.”
“As I said to the players in there, they’ve got to be proud of that performance. Junior Eccleston was amazing, what a performance he put in, and yeah, the fans come down, clapped the lads off because they see how much effort they put in, which is a great credit for them to travel all the way up here on Bank Holiday weekend as well, and obviously watch us get defeated, but they saw us put everything on the line, and to be fair, that’s all I can ask. If you start questioning yourself, you start questioning lots of things: are they running? Are they doing what you’re asking? And we can’t question that, it’s just not being good enough at the minute. I need to have a real long, hard look at myself like I am all the time, but yeah, I need to do some soul searching because this is the toughest period I’ve ever had as a manager. It’s hard.”
Wholesale changes were made to the team with just a day to rest before the visit to Greater Manchester, having lost to Scunthorpe United on Saturday. Mo Dabre made his long-awaited debut for the club, while Junior Eccleston and Jaiden White made their first league starts of the season, along with returns to the team for Jack Wadham, Kane Crichlow and Ashley Nadesan.
“Yeah, 100%, as I said to all the players at the start of pre-season: I’ll use you all, you’ve come in, we believe in you all, we trust you all.”
“Obviously we had the huge disappointment at Fulham when I gave them more chance to kind of get themselves in the team and I still believe that they’re all good players, and I said I needed to make changes, it needed to be fresh, but you see the lads were on their knees today, Edon [Pruti], Simps [Lewis Simper]; JT [Jack Taylor]’s got blood coming out of his face. The lads have worked their socks off and I’m incredibly proud of of them, how they work every day, and they should be proud of that performance. Someone just said to me in the tunnel, one of their representatives just said: you perform like that, you’ll do all right.”
Eccleston in particular shone during his 81-minute appearance, making it the most amount of minutes he’s played for Sutton’s first team in one go, having previously utilised cameo appearances off the bench, along with his 45-minute Sutton debut last season.
“I thought he was amazing. He got stronger and stronger, they had to take a player off, then the next one came on and he dealt with him as well. He’s worked so hard, to be fair, he’s a real credit to himself and his family. Even when he’s not been playing, he’s been watching so much work just in case he gets the opportunity, which is amazing. I didn’t tell him until just before the game that he was playing.
“He had a moment in the first half where I think he slipped him and JT and they got in but outside of that, he was a credit to himself, and I’m really, really pleased that he had such a good game, and I said to him that he doesn’t deserve to be on a losing team today.”
