Jimmy McNulty says he trusts in his players to react positively to Saturday’s defeat against Dagenham & Redbridge.
It is the first time this season that Dale have lost back-to-back league matches, after the defeat at Aldershot Town last weekend was followed by a 2-1 reverse against Daggers.
But the Head Coach backs his players and the culture of the group to respond.
“What I trust in is the culture of this group, their togetherness and their humility,” said McNulty.
“They accept when we haven’t done that well, and I think that’s the reason why we’ve gone 30 games in the league, and this is the first time we’ve been beaten back-to-back.
“The culture is the reason, which I back no matter what the score line is.
“I back this group of this lads that will be on the training ground again this week with the attitude of ‘we need to be better than the last game’, and not an arrogant attitude that it was everyone else’s fault. Because it wasn’t, it was ours.”
McNulty admitted that Dale didn’t have the required cutting edge against Dagenham at the Crown Oil Arena, where they hadn’t been beaten since October prior to Saturday.
“It’s a disappointing loss. We struggled – a lot of the performance was sluggish. The timing of the main actions in the game were not good for us.
“We didn’t start the game well. We were slow out of the blocks when we wanted to be quick at home. We know we’ve had very good home form – that’s the first game we’ve lost at home since October [in the league].
“The first ten minutes was us trying to wrestle back control in the game. We had to battle to get that control and I think after the ten-minute mark, we did that. We got into better areas. We were starting to look like what the game plan.
“We were always a pass or two short of a good moment, and the one moment we did it well was the goal. It was an excellent goal. Back in the game at 1-1, but we struggled with the game management aspect as a group. It was a disappointing time for us to concede, after we’d just taken control of the game.
“It was just quality in the cutting-edge end of the pitch. We were just low on it. We were able to get the ball around Dagenham into the key areas but the final pass, cross, one-two, shot, all eluded us.
“We were always trying to push the game to get going and that’s how it constantly felt against a team that really slow-played us.
“For me, we struggled with a lack of maturity and focus on what was important. The scuffles and things don’t matter, getting the ball back in play and moving is important for us. That’s what the real elite teams do against a team that play slowly.
“They had a couple of break aways late in the game which you would expect late in the game, but the goals were just flashbang moments of us mishandling the game.”
Watch the full post-match interview with McNulty below via our official YouTube channel. He talks about Kairo Mitchell’s return, gives timescales on injured players’ potential returns, as well as discussing Academy player Mateus Mane who made the matchday squad.