Yeovil Town defender Michael Smith has said that the Glovers’ dressing room felt like it had suffered a defeat after a late freak own goal, gave Chippenham a point on Tuesday night.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Sheridan Robins the right back admitted, they may not have deserved the full three points.
“Probably, we didn’t deserve to win it, i thought they battled hard tonight and we just couldn’t find the right pass at the right moment to pick them off.
Fair play to them, they know it was a crazy OG, but yeah they battled hard probably deserved their draw in the end.
They set up well and it worked well, but it’s down to us to find a way to break them down and tonight we weren’t good enough and we know that but, I’m pretty sure all of us thought that we wouldn’t go through the league season winning the rest of the games so it’s a little test for us now, we have to go and win on Saturday.”
The visitors were faced with a narrow and compact defensive unit and despite creating chances, couldn’t find the goals to see off their hosts.
“The level is great and we come up against teams who set up and it’s down to us to play against them, fair play to the fans, travelled in their numbers again and just Sorry that we couldn’t get a win for them tonight.
I think we probably should have went more and tried to kill them off, but we did have a few chances throughout the game, it just wasn’t falling for us at the right moment, we eventually got the goal and we should have seen it out, but as I say, it’s a crazy OG and we can’t really blame anyone for that, we go again at the weekend.”
We’re in the changing room there and it does feel like a defeat, everyone’s heads are down,
The equaliser game just before the 90 minute mark as Ducan Idehern and Morgan Williams got in a mix up that ended up with the ball cannoning off Williams from the clearance and into Joe Day’s goal, Smith says they’ll both learn and move on from it.
“They’re (Williams and Idehern) two good lads and they’ve been around, I know they’re only young, but they’ve still been around men’s football and first team football, yeah, forget about things like that, I made a mistake a couple of weeks ago and you have to forget about it pretty quickly if you want to stay in the team – it moves quickly and Saturday comes around pretty quickly and as I said it’s no-one’s fault, it’s just one of those crazy OG’s.”
Reflecting on the result, the Northern Irishman admitted the changing room was a quiet place, but that Saturday was an opportunity to bounce back… and that the Glovers are still in a very good position.
“We’re in the changing room there and it does feel like a defeat, everyone’s heads are down, but the gaffer spoke brilliantly about going through a tough period and picking ourselves up and getting ready to go again Saturday.
Nine clear, it’s nice, I think if you’d have said to us at the start of the season we’d been nine clear at this stage we’d probably bite your hand off for it, but it’s down to us to – you know – we need to pick teams like this off more easily, move the ball a bit better and find those final passes a bit better, it’s down to us on the pitch, the manager sets us up and we go out there, if we can’t break them down, it’s our problem.
Some teams have set up like that against us, sit on the ball and try and counter because we’ll be a big scalp for them and tonight, seeing them they celebrated like they’d won the league and fair play to them, I thought they were brilliant, it wasn’t our night tonight.”
You can listen to the full interview below