United assistant manager Davie Irons (DI) spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's James Phillips (JP) following Carlisle's 6-1 League One hammering away to Preston, Irons saying he didn't see the performance coming:
JP
What do you say after that one, a bit of a tough ask for you sent up to do the interview, what has been the reaction in the changing room?
DI
It is obviously major disappointment from us all. We certainly didn’t see that result of performance coming, certainly in previous weeks we have spoken about it that we have been really solid. As you know yourself, we have had four clean sheets in five games and we have come here with a bit of confidence and left here obviously with our tails firmly between our legs.
JP
I know that you will feel this as well but there are fans getting in touch and they feel humiliated by this, what would the club like to say to them?
DI
Well, we offer them our sincere apologies on behalf of the players and the management, our performance certainly wasn’t good enough on the day. We have come down here with a bit of confidence and we have been well and truly beaten. But, and it is a big but, we have still got a massive job to do and albeit it maybe sounds strange at the moment to say it but we still firmly believe that we are good enough to get out of the position that we are in.
I know that people will say that after that performance it doesn’t look like it, which I can take that, but we have to regroup and stick together. We win as a team and we lose as a team, there is nobody getting individually blamed for anything, it is a collective performance that wasn’t good enough on the day. That is the team, the players, the coaches, all of us, we weren’t good enough today. So, apologies to the fans who have travelled and spent good money to watch a performance where we didn’t see that coming today at all.
JP
If you are looking for a positive, at half-time we thought that you were well in it, we thought there was a good chances what happened?
DI
At half-time we have come in really back in the game, when there is only one goal in it you are back in the game. We have had a real positive discussion at half-time about how we go forward second-half. We made the points that Preston are comfortable in their play-off position and they maybe wouldn’t be quite up for a real battle if we get in and about them in the second-half. Unfortunately they have scored a third goal, and he has been great for us Jordan Pickford but he has dropped one.
The lad is gutted in there as the rest of them are, but he has dropped that one and it looked like it knocked the stuffing out of the team from that point on. From then on Preston have got their tails up and played some good stuff, they carved us open on numerous occasions and they have scored a number of goals. That performance certainly wasn’t good enough and we didn’t see it coming at all.
JP
The fans won’t like it if I sort of wash over the fact that there has been the odd reasonably big defeat, but there hasn’t been a collapse like that for a while, how concerning is it that it did fall apart as badly as it did in the end?
DI
Yeah, it is concerning, obviously there is concern at this stage of the season as there are only five games to go. It is a major, major disappointment, our goal difference is really affected with it as well. But, we have said all along that as group we have to stick together and to start pulling bits apart from the group that we have got, and when I say the group I mean the management, staff and players, we don’t start pulling people away and criticising individuals.
We have come here today, we will analyse what we didn’t do right and that goes back to the training ground and what we have done this week. How we have prepared, how we have set up, we will look at that and we will hopefully, at the moment we haven’t got the answers but we will come up with the answers over the weekend. We have got a massive weekend coming up with two games in four days, and we could have a totally different complexion with the situation we are in this time a week on Monday, if we can turn things round which I am sure we can.
JP
Your career in football has been an amazing range of promotions and relegations and the like, or certainly fights like this, do you think you can help Graham Kavanagh with that experience of things and try to find the performance on the back of this one. Because, as you said, coming into it four clean sheets in five, this is just such a shocker and it is a very, very bad time for it to happen?
DI
Yeah, obviously that is what my job is to give every bit of my experience and knowledge and help that I can to Graham and to the players and we are in it together. When you end up in coaching and management it is down to the fact that you have had experiences that you can use hopefully to the benefit of the group. I go back to what you said about the four previous clean sheets, that gives us a huge amount of confidence and we know that when we defend properly and our minds are on it and everybody is doing their jobs to the best of their ability then we can get performances.
We played a really good footballing team last week in Swindon and we got a great result, Preston obviously very similar in the type that they are a very strong, good, footballing and powerful side. On their day they have blown us away but I know it is only one game and we have to try to get that out of our system very quickly and move on to the next weekend when we have got two big games.
JP
As bad as it is now has it almost rendered the goal difference irrelevant and you just have to focus on getting enough points to stay up now?
DI
Yeah, I think that has been the way we have looked at it all along. It is points that we are going to get on the board that is going to make the difference and not the goal difference. I am not saying we have come down here and this is a game we would right off but, and I hope the fans take this the right way, we have to write this one off very quickly and put it to the back of our minds and move on to next weekend.
But, we will learn, we will take a lot from the game in terms of experience, you learn a lot from defeats and what we have learned today is that we have basically crumbled in a game where with a number of games left we should have been able to stand up and perhaps be counted and start maybe fighting a bit harder and a bit tougher for each other and each other collectively, and we didn’t do that today.
JP
It is perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase but managers from Graham Kavanagh and Greg Abbott before them have asked fans to draw a line in the sand and move on from a number of games for two years or so now. I think the fans have been asking for a while now, how long is it we are going to have drawn a line in the sand and actually have moved on from the problems we are having?
DI
Well, I can understand that, fans are entitled to their opinion and entitled to their views. They have travelled in their numbers here today and I suppose it is a local derby in some respects and my sincere apologies to them. If I am a fan I am sitting there thinking oh here they go again apologising, but we have got to take this and we have got to look at the bigger picture here.
We have got five games of the season left, our aim at the start and Graham and Tony [Caig] and myself, when we took over was to keep this club in League One. That was our aim and that hasn’t changed, and although today is a tough one for us all to take we are still on track to achieve what we set out to achieve, and that is to stay in this league, and we will be giving everything in our power to do that.
JP
This is a hard one for you because I know Graham Kavanagh is the manager and we knew he had to shoot off, we knew that before the game even if you had won today, there are fans saying that the three of you who are running Carlisle are not up to it. Do you think, I mean that is a hard one to deal with, but do you think that you have got what it takes between you to find the points you need, and the experience and all the components required to keep Carlisle in League One?
DI
Absolutely, I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t think we were up to the task. We have come in to do a job, the club has put a lot of trust and responsibility on Graham, Tony and myself to do a job and we will do it and we can do it. Every manager gets criticism, funnily enough I was talking to David Moyes on Monday and he was telling me what a tough job he has got at Manchester United.
We are not immune from criticism and when you suffer big defeats like we have today that criticism is going to get magnified. But, I know how strong and knowledgeable Graham Kavanagh is as a manager and coach, I know what I have got to offer him, Tony knows what he can offer him and above all we know what the players can do.
We know they can be better than they were today, we know this was a bad, bad day, a bad performance, everything that could go wrong went wrong today. But, if you analyse our season it has been very much an up and down season so far, but when we play we are as good as anybody in this league, you have seen it yourself at games that we are as good as anyone. However, when we lose games we seem to have a soft centre about us which we have to toughen up and we have to improve that.
JP
And I know questions like that will hurt you, and I know performances like this will hurt you as well as the fans, can you use that now to try to inspire the players for these next games to say they don’t want that as much as the fans don’t now?
DI
Absolutely, the players know what is at stake, I know is sounds like I patronise fans when I say it, but they do generally feel like they are hurting, they have let the club down, they have let the fans down and they have let themselves down. I think that as a professional footballer it goes back to even when I played I remember managers telling me that you have got to have pride in your own performance.
I know every one of our players in there are hurting because they have let themselves down. That will be a motivational tool that we will use this week to try to inspire the group to a performance that we know we have to get when we play Walsall on Friday.
JP
A couple of important other ones, has Pascal Chimbonda picked up another knock, was that another injury or was that a tactical one?
DI
It was a gamble that didn’t quite work in terms of his fitness, it was touch and go, we thought his experience would have been key today and it probably would have been if he could have got through the game. But, he just wasn’t quite right, he wanted to give it a go and unfortunately it didn’t quite work for us. But, we are hoping that he will be OK for next Friday.
JP
Liam Noble and Lee Miller both came on, has that helped or hindered them in the longer run?
DI
Well, strangely enough today we were looking at our squad and our bench and I think it was probably the first time we have thought we have got quite a strong bench for a long, long time. It didn’t quite reflect that did it with the result and the performance, however it is a positive that Liam Noble and Lee Miller are back earlier than we thought they would be back. So, that gives us something to work with in terms of numbers this week, probably give options for Graham as well in terms of what we do Friday. But, all I can reiterate is that we can apologise to everyone connected with the club that our performance today wasn’t good enough, but it makes us doubly determined to get it right.