Barry Smith apologised to The Shots’ travelling supporters on the final whistle at the Deva Stadium last night and reiterated his apology to ShotsTV.
“I’m embarrassed by that performance,” admitted Barry after the 8-2 defeat by Chester. “These guys have paid a lot of money to come up here and that’s not a performance that we are proud of, so I went over and apologised. I take full responsibility, it was me that put that team out on the pitch, and it’s not one that I’m proud of. We were outclassed today and that’s a sad thing to say.”
“We’ve got to give credit to Chester – for as much as we were poor their movement as excellent. But defensively we were all over the place, we didn’t match runners, we got done by strength and pace down the sides. If you defend like that you get everything that comes to you, you’ll never have any chance in a game. It’s unacceptable.
“Generally we play quite a high defensive line but you’ve got to react to the situation, and if it’s happened once it shouldn’t happen again. But we didn’t adjust and we allowed them to just keep knocking the ball down the channel and it caused us problems all night.”
Ross Lafayette and Dan Walker scored two excellent goals, but they were of scant solace to the manager, who saw the game slip from his grasp as Chester scored four in ten minutes leading up to half-time.
“At 2-1 we think we’ve actually got a chance in the game, because we were creating chances,” he stressed. “Ross Lafayette is the only plus point tonight, I thought he was excellent and we took him off to give him a wee bit of respite so that he’s fully fit for Saturday.”
Attention immediately turned to that game, against Torquay United at the EBB Stadium, with Barry scheduling an extra training session on Wednesday to help the team bounce back in our first home game for a month.
“The boys will be in tomorrow. We’ll definitely be watching that video again to make sure that they know it’s not acceptable.”
