Soham Town Rangers manager Brett Whaley reflects on 5-1 defeat at Harleston Town in 2023/24 season opener

Watch Soham Town Rangers manager Brett Whaley reflects on 5-1 defeat at Harleston Town in 2023/24 season opener - Suffolk News on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00 Brett, obviously a tough one today. You started off quite positively after going behind and

00:09 got yourselves back to 1-1, looked like you were going to go ahead but then Halston made

00:16 you suffer thereafter.

00:18 Yeah, I think we were quite pleased up until probably 5-10 minutes before half-time. I

00:24 think at that stage we had a good reaction to conceding, we had decent possession and

00:29 I think we'd given away four goals before half-time. I thought the first goal was too

00:34 easy as well from set pieces. I think our frustration with the game is we'd given too

00:37 many easy goals away. Let's not take away from them because as the game went on I thought

00:42 they got better and better and we struggled. I think the problem is we were competitive

00:47 for that 40-odd minutes. The goal just before half-time, just after a skill in the game

00:54 and a figure of step. From our point of view, we've got a lot of young players and when

00:57 we come under pressure, that told, the 418 involved today, that's difficult because you're

01:04 expecting being under pressure by an experienced side who's used to winning and unfortunately

01:09 the young lads then, we probably got pulled all over a little bit with shape. I think

01:15 we knew there was a lot of work to do. It's a new squad, we've seen over pre-season we've

01:20 had patches of good football like we did today but I'm not going to sugar-coat it, we lost

01:24 5-1 with five bad goals and if we continue to do that it will be a difficult season.

01:28 We said to the mass of the game, it's up to them if they want to knuckle down, we'll work

01:31 harder and they've got to do the same.

01:34 Sure, and at least you've got a Tuesday night game now coming up where you can try and put

01:39 things right from this opening day.

01:41 You do want the game to come straight away. I think we had five lads not here today. I

01:45 think starting in July it becomes a bit of a lottery because school teachers in the squad

01:51 are away, we've got a few young lads away as well. We'll take five out of what we've

01:55 been putting together in pre-season and bear in mind we've only had six games together.

01:59 We looked like a side that was just coming together today. When we were on top of the

02:03 game we looked like we had good shape, good discipline. As the game started to get stretched

02:08 we looked like a side that was just coming together and I think losing some experienced

02:12 players, that's not an excuse, but they would have been in the same boat as well.

02:16 We'll have four or five back on Tuesday, we'll obviously have to make some changes because

02:20 we can't accept what we did today. Hopefully the lads will go away and collect on it and

02:25 make sure there's better performance on Tuesday.

02:27 OK, well thanks very much for talking to us.