Manager Keith Hill reflects on Dale’s 1-1 draw with Bradford City at the Crown Oil Arena…
“It’s a bad mistake but we’ve got to support Josh because he has been marvellous, and I’ll always support players who are brave,” said Hill on Lillis’ error which led to the late Bantams’ equaliser.
“He tries to come for it, but it’s a basic mistake that has been made, and it’s one of those where you take your eye off the ball and before you know it it’s in the back of the net.
“It wasn’t going to be a comfortable 1-0 victory but it was up until the point where Josh has unfortunately made the error that has cost us three points today.
“We probably should have made more of our first half opportunities. We scored a really good goal, but I thought there were other really good opportunities before that where we should have showed more composure.
“It’s small margins and mistakes. I don’t think there’s an awful lot wrong with what we’re doing at the football club and the strategies that we are going with, but individual mistakes have cost us at key times and have affected results which have seen us draw too many games. The losing margin is relatively the same as what it was last season, but we should have at least won eight of the 16 games that we’ve drawn.
He continued: “I can’t get inside the brain of all these players individually. Sometimes it’s stress and sometimes it’s negativity energy, because they understand that we’re in a position where we can get relegated.
“There were one or two players today whose energy levels were maybe affected by the pressure of the game, in the same way I remember having to leave Peter Cavanagh and Matty Done out of the side when we got promoted because of the demands of the games. It could mean playing a few of the other players on Tuesday but I’m pretty limited with my resources at the minute.
“I could have been doing with leaving Joe Thompson out today to rest him for Tuesday, but at this moment in time I just don’t have the personnel available. You can include Keith Keane in that because someone like him would really steady this ship at this moment in time.
“Steven Davies is having a fitness test just now and he’ll continue to do that over the next few days. We’ve got key players, key personalities and key characters missing that we need during the course of these end game. I’m putting Kgosi on in midfield and the other option in midfield I’ve got is Aaron Morley but is it the right thing to put him on to make sure we’re defensively solid? Gilly came on for Bradden and I thought he was superb.”
Watch the full interview on iFollow.