Bury were outclassed on the day suffering a 4-3 defeat to the hands of Lower Beck ending the Shakers unbeaten run. Dave McNabb when speaking to the club gave his thoughts on the game.
Dave McNabb: “I don’t think we were good enough especially in the first half, In the second half I thought we were better we competed more and won more first and second contacts but I can’t believe we’re at the point where were congratulating the lads for putting a bit of effort in but the second half was better but I think on the balance of play and chances we probably should’ve come away with a point as we missed some gilt-edged chances especially towards the end but I won’t take anything away from Lower Breck they put us to the sword they had four shots in the first half that one of the lads put just wide and a freekick maybe but the other three big chances they had they’ve put away. They were clinical and deservedly went in 3-1 up and that put us in a tough position obviously to get something out the game, but we almost did get something out of it but I’m really disappointed with the performance.”
Dave then spoke about what potentially went wrong in the first half saying “Most things to be honest and look you can’t come to places like this and not fight and the desire and passion that was shown in the second half wasn’t there in the first half, but you’ve got to win first contacts and second balls what we just didn’t do. I think the officials had a tough day as well if you look at two of the goals that went against us were really poor decisions especially the first one on the corner the goalkeepers being held back and they just didn’t see the obvious and they had a really difficult day I think.”
He then spoke about the half time changes of Gaz Peet and Reuben Jerome replacing Connor Pye and Sam Coughlan and what that offered saying “We just needed to get more players on the top line I don’t think we were brave enough to play and we couldn’t play through the thirds and DJ [Pedro] was on his own and was trying to fight two powerful centre halves so I had to get another player on the top line and try and play from the first contact further up the pitch but to be honest 3 or 4 probably could’ve come off at half time.”
Dave concluded on what the team must improve on to avoid dropping further points ahead of next weekend’s game, he said: “We need to look at ourselves because look I’m not going to blow this one up we’ve lost one game in 22 games so I think the fact we’re so angry and disappointed in this shows where we are, we’ve obviously had too many draws but to lose your first game towards the back end of November when you’ve already played 22 games is a testament to the lads and it’s the same group that won 8-0 on Saturday and were absolutely sublime so nothing has changed in that and I don’t think we’ve turned into a bad team or bad players overnight of course, we haven’t so just need to look back we have a full week of training again we meant to have a full week this week obviously we got kibosh a bit because of the weather so hopefully it’s a little bit kinder towards us and have a full week training and re establish some of the way we want to play and re establish some of the requirements of what we need from the players and staff and look we’ve still got some games in hand but you can’t expect to win them if you are not putting the performances in.”
