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" The biggest concern for me is the way that we have lost today. I thought the performances against Chester and Orient were half-decent and the result wasn’t what we wanted but the performance today was well below what we expect of the players.
" Over the last couple of years we’ve sort of built this little bit of success, as you may call it, on being solid as a back four and having good communication between each other and having leaders out there and today we’ve had no leaders at all. We’ve laid down and died.
" I’m not going to take anything away from Bristol Rovers because they thoroughly deserved the win but we’ve just laid down and given them the game today. We have been poor everywhere throughout the team, there was no real desire there and again we’ve got ourselves off to a tremendous start with the goal. You hope that is going to settle players down but at the moment it’s the worst thing we can do going a goal up.
" We just crumbled.The minute we went a goal down, we’re sat there and we’re trying to scream at the players to keep taking the game on to Bristol and to keep pushing out and closing the gap up between the midfield and the back four. We just got deeper and deeper today and we’ve been punished for it.
" I don’t think there are a lot of positives to take out of it. There are a couple of individuals, Zigor was a little bit better today, he got back close to what we expect of him. I thought Peter Murphy’s worked his socks off in the game today, Alan (O’Brien) has taken his goal well but we didn’t provide him with enough ball.
" Alan is one of those players, who I knew when we brought him in what he was like. When he’s got the ball he can be dangerous but you have to get it to him because he’s not quite got it in his game where he has to go and look for it.
" Right through the side was so disappointing, we are scratching our heads as to why because these same players were full of heart and full of passion and wanted to go and win games and wanted to go and work for each other. Unfortunately today that has definitely not been there.
" When you’ve got a player like Alan (O’Brien) in the side and he only joined us yesterday for training. It was obvious though after yesterday’s training session that the lad has got pace to burn, he will murder most people with his pace. When you then get into a situation, if you weren’t clear from that training session, if you weren’t clear from the instruction that has been given before the game about getting the ball out wide to him. Then I think when he goes on that run and scores the first goal then as a footballer you think we’ve got something here that we can use and will cause problems and you get the ball out to him as much as you can.
" I said before the game, at half-time and at the end of the game I want Alan O’Brien to be absolutely sick to death of touching the ball. I want him to get it every single time, I want him to go and run at their players, I want him linking off the strikers, I want him to get crosses in and be fed up of the sight of a football by the end of today.
" We did it for five minutes, we did it until the goal and then we stopped doing it and we turned down opportunities where we could do it. Again, that isn’t why we’ve lost the game today, we’ve lost the game today because we didn’t defend properly. We didn’t have the passion that we want, we didn’t have leaders to go and pull people around and talk and organise and make it happen for us. If we carry on like that it’s going to be a long slog.
" I’m very disappointed, today is the angriest I have been, I picked a side today that I thought was going to be fresh. I thought we could go and have a real go, I thought players would come in and would talk and help each other and encourage each other and give us a bit of spark.
" The spark is not there, the substitutes who we are putting on, there is no spark from them. I don’t know what the problem is. They play in reserve games and they look lively and then there is no spark today. They are working hard in training, but we’ve got to address it, we’ve got to get on with it now.
" We’re back in, the next game now is Oxford away and we’ve got to be better than we were today. We’ve got to start getting back to the way that we were in the away performances before Chester and we’ve got to make sure we roll our sleeves up and all continue to work hard. Without that hard work you’re never going to get anything.
" Bristol Rovers have come today and worked their socks off so we’re not asking anything which is out of the reaches of the players.
" Brendan McGill is injured and failed a fitness test this morning. He got a whack in training on Thursday just above his knee. We wanted to leave it as late as possible, he had a fitness test this morning and he couldn’t even jog, That’s the reason why Brendan McGill wasn’t playing. "