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" I don’t think we can fault the effort tonight, that’s not in question at all. I think that we let ourselves down because we started the game fantastically well and then we stopped and we allowed them to get into the game. If we’d have really gone for the jugular when you go 1-0 up against a side who have got their own difficulties, they had a lot of changes, a lot of players coming in who have not been involved recently, we should have really gone for the throat.
" We took our foot off, they got back in it with a bit of a skirmish on the edge of the box and the lad has struck it in. It’s disappointing, we definitely deserved a point out of it, I think towards the end we had enough pressure to have gone and won it.
" Maybe you’ve got to give them a bit of credit though, I thought they defended superbly well tonight. They put their heads in, they won 99% of the balls that went into the box – they got their heads on them. We’ve got to get ourselves going again now, we’ve got to just pick ourselves up. There are some tired legs from the heavy pitch out there, get everybody right and go again on Saturday, that’s all we can do now. "
" We didn’t believe this was going to be an easy game, I don’t think that is the problem tonight. It was one of those nights where it didn’t happen, we’ve got into good areas, had some good play where we’ve had flicks and we’ve got little knock downs in the box. Adam Murray has got onto a couple and put them over the bar, we had a couple of other opportunities where balls were sliding about in the box and we’ve not quite had the final touch on them. We had the penalty and it’s disappointing when you miss a penalty but all those things we just have to get out of our heads now and just get ready for Saturday’s game.
" I have to say I didn’t think it was going to be our night. I thought when the penalty happened that it wasn’t going to be our night. I don’t know how many times their defenders have slid in, a couple of times, in my opinion, they have stopped it with their arm from crosses going in. We can’t really talk about officials though, they don’t allow it.
" It was a good save by the keeper (Joe Hart), he is a good goalkeeper, it was a nice height for him though. I think he won the little psychological battle from Lummy (Chris Lumsdon) taking one the other week against him, or taking two the other week against him. That’s the unfortunate thing about it, I have to say I’ve just looked at the video before I’ve come up here and I haven’t got a clue why he has given a penalty.
" The lad on the line (Ben Herd), it didn’t look like he handballed it, the linesman in the first place flagged for a goal and ran towards the halfway line, he then went back and did the same thing again. Then for some reason he decided to change his mind but the lad on the line didn’t handball it. The keeper saved it, it’s gone onto the post and come back out and between the referee and linesman they have come up with an incredible decision. "
" On video it doesn’t look like the ball went over the line, the angle doesn’t look as if it is. It is a bit of a harsh sending-off for the lad but it gave us a kick up the backside and fortunately we managed to get a goal at the end. I’m delighted for Derek (Holmes) that he’s got the goal and hopefully it’ll be the first of a few for him.
" I’ve no idea of any other results. I was raging afterwards just because of the little sloppy bits that have allowed them to get a foothold into the game so I haven’t even looked at anything else. If we only pick up a point we know that we’re not going to go top tonight so we wanted to win the game. I said before that I wasn’t even going to play about with it, I wanted six points out of these two games so I’m disappointed we’ve only taken one. It is a blow but the only thing we can do is get ourselves right and make sure we do it properly on Saturday.
" Karl Hawley’s groin was sore in the first-half, he said after about 20-25 minutes that he was sore it with it. He wanted to have a go but he was struggling with it and we weren’t getting the right sort of movement from him, he looked a little bit laboured when he was getting opportunities and we felt we had to change it. I thought that Mark Rivers did very well tonight, I was pleased with him because he has had a couple of performances that I know he has been disappointed with. He’s getting himself fitter and tonight I think he showed a little bit better of what we can expect from Mark Rivers.
" I don’t believe that we and the players should forget about tonight, you have to learn from every game. I think the thing we learned tonight is that when we had them, we didn’t go for the throat and we didn’t really go and kill the game off. We allowed them back into it and that’s something that we don’t want, we want to keep that momentum going. We are disappointed but the thing that I have said in there is that we definitely deserved something out of the game. We’ve only taken a point, maybe we deserved a little bit more, but maybe that is being a bit unfair on the way that Shrewsbury have come and defended as well. "