Coventry City manager Steven Pressley has admitted that his side are low on confidence after the 4-1 defeat at Oldham Athletic.
Pressley, who, many supports suspect is clearly is not getting the best out of his players if their confidence is low, told the Coventry Telegraph's Alan Poole: We obviously aren’t a side brimming with confidence at this time and I think that was very evident in our performance.
“But I don’t want to come out here and criticise the players too much because just now we’ve got too many of them who are fragile.
“This is a really difficult time for me, the players, everybody – I’m bitterly disappointed for our travelling supporters because that time of performance wasn’t good enough. But we have to find a way; we have to show the resilience and strength to get out of this.
“ You can see now that we’re tentative and struggling with the physicality of the game – far too often we’re being bullied as a team and we need to grow up and grow up quickly.
“The one thing you have to do in football, especially in the English leagues, is earn the right to play and just now we’re not doing that. Hopefully we’ll get personnel back who will add to that physicality, but certain players have got to be stronger in their personal battles – that’s part of the game.
“It’s tough going now and very frustrating. I thought coming into this game we could give ourselves a foundation to start building again but we haven’t done that so we must look again on Saturday.
“We tried to be a little bit tighter and hopefully get a foothold in the game but when you ‘re haemorrhaging the goals we are at this time it gives you no chance.
“When we were playing at our best our decision-making was very good, we were really positive, but confidence is a huge part of the game. We work a lot on our defending but just now it’s not our shape that’s causing the problems it’s fundamental mistakes,
“The first goal was typical of the goals we’ve been conceding – a long ball, we don’t win the first header and we don’t cover on the second header so we lose another goal. We can’t continue to do that.”
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