Manager Robbie Stockdale’s on Dale’s 2-0 defeat to Bradford City at the Utilita Energy Stadium.
“Really disappointed in many aspects. I just had a little look through some of the chances created and we had seven absolute clear cut chances and we only hit the target with one, so that’s not good enough,” said the Gaffer in his post-match interview.
“Again, people are telling me the stats and we were quite dominant in the game but there’s only one that matters and that’s the scoreline, so until we start to get that bit right, and we have done, it’s only really the last couple of games in the league that we haven’t, it makes it difficult for ourselves, so that’s where I’m at, at the minute.”
He continued: “We certainly need to be more clinical, that’s a definite. You concede two goals and the second one is on the break and we’re pushing men forward, that’s ok in terms of you understand why that happens. Again, we can stop it.
“It seems like we’re trying to score the perfect goal. We open teams up where other teams score the scruffy goals and maybe we need a little bit of that in our game.”
Reflecting on the first half, the boss commented: “I felt it could have been 3-3 or 4-4 to be perfectly honest, it was too open for my liking. In terms of - it was like we attack, you attack - they had chances, we had chances.
“The goal is poor from our point of view. I’ve spoke to the players numerous times about switching on from throw ins. We felt it at Mansfield, we felt it against Oldham and we’ve done it again, so it’s something we need to work on and it’s something we need to get better at.
“Straight after the game your emotions are high, and I’m sure I’ll look back on the game and see some really good bits in our performance, but we’ve lost 2-0 and whatever we think of as positive, ultimately it’s a really bad weekend for us.”
And Stockdale was disappointed with conceding two goals.
“I’ll watch the game back tomorrow morning and there will be loads of aspects where I think we’ve done really well in the game, but we can’t keep giving ourselves a mountain to climb by the goals we concede. That’s it. It’s moments in games where we switch off, or there’s a lack of communication and teams punish you. We need to learn and we need to learn quickly.”
Watch the Gaffer’s interview in full on our YouTube channel.