Manager Keith Hill reflects on Dale’s Checkatrade Trophy second round defeat to Chesterfield…
“There was nothing really in the game but we got done from a set-play for the first goal which I’m really disappointed about because we’ve been really good with that recently," said Hill.
“We had one or two chances towards the end of the first half but I think their goalkeeper made some outstanding saves.
“We didn’t have the energy and the intensity that I expected from that team. There were two or three who couldn’t be involved today – Keith Keane, Callum Camps phoned in with a little bit of a stiff neck and Joe Raff’s got a bruised toe – and I had to make changes to the team selection.
“But we should have done better with respect to the team that we put out today, or I expected better from the first 30 or 40 minutes. You have to give a team who haven’t played together time to bed in but I was disappointed with the goal because it gave us a bit of a hill to climb, although I thought we were capable of climbing it. I put Stevie Davies on at half-time but then we got the sending off which was really, really disappointing – the only positive is that Jimmy won’t be suspended for Saturday.
“I’m disappointed in the manner that he got sent off and that made it extremely hard but I put Jamie [Allen] and Donal [McDermott] on, who haven’t been with us for a while because they’ve been injured. They trained with us this afternoon and I put them on the bench. I thought they had a good work out and we nearly, very nearly, climbed that hill because we created opportunities but their goalkeeper has done brilliantly.
“I think they [Chesterfield] were more than satisfied with the two-nil score line and they were prepared to sit a little bit deeper.
“I’m disappointed because you want to win every game and get something from every game. You want positive momentum and we’ve had that because we’ve had positive displays. I think parts of tonight were positive but there was a lot there that I saw, probably individually, that I wasn’t happy with.
“It really annoys me because the squad of players that we’ve got know what’s necessary and what they should be doing when they’re out on the pitch. They’ve got no excuses.”
Watch the full interview on Dale PlayerHD.