Billy Rowley apologised following Yeovil Town’s 2-1 defeat at Brackley. The Glovers conceded two poor goals in the National League Premier clash and the manager disappointed with the performance.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s, Ian Randall, Rowley said: “I know I’m supposed to say this to the fans, but I genuinely mean it: I am very thankful for them coming to support us today. And I’m going to apologise for that performance. I know all the lads will be in there agreeing. Everything we planned for against Brackley kind of was true: the game plan, their threats, how we were going to potentially deal with them. And at no point in this interview am I ever going to pretend like it’s the players – it’s all of us, it’s me. I’ll own that defeat on the chin.”
Rowley referred to his first interview where he said he was going to be ‘learning every game’ and said he was going to ‘figure out’ those of his squad who want to be on the journey.
“I tell you what it does for me is it motivates me a lot. In the first interview I said at this club, I’m going to be learning every game. I’m a very observant person, and I will figure out the players that want to come on this journey and don’t. I’m really disappointed by that performance today in a number of ways.”
The manager did give credit to the hosts, who he knew would provide a tough challenge.
“Brackley are good at home at what they do. They sit in a block, they frustrate you, and they’re very good at that. They deserved the win today. Obviously, scoring early helped them a lot,it means they can drop their line and sit on the edge of their box. Then it’s tricky to play over them because there’s no space in behind; they have tight lines and it’s hard to then feed the players in the front areas of the pitch.”
“Obviously, the two goals, if you watch them back, they’re errors from us, really. It’s a set-piece chance that we’ve not really defended in the correct zones, and it’s a bit of a mix-up with the first goal. It was very much a creation of our own downfall there. But I felt even from when they scored the first goal, probably 15 to 20 minutes after that, I felt really comfortable with how the game was looking.
“We were arriving in their final third so often, and it was just the final choice. We were just a bit loose. We didn’t cross it when we should have crossed it with any quality, we didn’t slip people in when we should have. And then the more you make bad decisions in games, the more psychologically it becomes a really tricky game because you start doubting yourself, you start doubting the plan, and then you tend to make even more bad decisions. And that’s kind of what we did today. I think we started to doubt ourselves and probably overthink a little bit.
“I think there’s two ways to approach that when you’re playing against a block: you can either slow the game out to draw people out and then inject the speed, or you can just move the ball side-to-side really quickly and hopefully they jump out. We kind of did neither of those, which is again—this is a bit of a process we’re going through. We just weren’t very good today. Some of our attacking play, some of our choices weren’t great, so it’s definitely something we’re going to review and improve on.”
Rowley added that getting performances right at home is going to crucial for the remaining matches this season.
“I think one thing that we’re going to try to do in these 19 games remaining in the league is to make sure we’re very good at home. If you get draws away from home, it’s not the end of the world. I think probably a draw today would have been fair, but we’ll wear that loss on the chin.”