Daryl McMahon made no excuses for his side’s second-half performance on Tuesday night, ranking it amongst the poorest since his appointment to the Fleet hotseat.
“Hampton deserved it,” McMahon told Charles Webster. “Second-half we were really, really poor. I’ve said in there to the lads it’s probably the worst 45 minutes since I’ve been manager. It lacked everything we’ve been good at, the technical quality was almost zero from a team that’s normally, especially here, so free-flowing and so good on the ball. We didn’t see any of it tonight.”
The Fleet knew they were in for a tussle against a side who were the second-highest scorers in the league but McMahon said his players should have coped better. “Their front four are pretty good, all good one v one so they are difficult to play against but I expect us to deal with them better. It’s frustrating because on Saturday I thought we should have won the match, tonight I think we’re lucky to get a point and we need to perform a lot better than that. There wasn’t a hangover yesterday [in training], there shouldn’t be tonight but it was just a rank performance to be honest.”
The manager was, however, pleased with the contribution of goalscorer Bradley Bubb on only his second league start this season. “He’s getting goals and playing like he did tonight, especially in the first half, covering the extent of the pitch and holding it up, I thought he was excellent.”
And McMahon had a word of warning for players that don’t perform, saying everyone was “under threat” should performances dip below an expected level. “We need a reaction, without a doubt,” he said. “It’s got to hurt to lose, I know it hurts me to lose and it feels like a loss tonight because of the performance. I want to see players that care, who run around and make tackles and get on the ball and pass it properly, simple basic things that we haven’t seen tonight. It’s nowhere near good enough for the club.”
Listen to the full interview below.
https://soundcloud.com/eufcofficial/daryl-after-hampton
