Tisdale on the Chesterfield Home Defeat: “We didn’t show enough composure”

In blustery conditions at St James Park, Exeter City went down 2-0 to a Chesterfield side who finished the night top of League 2. Much of the talk will be about zonal marking and how the Grecians failed to create chances. The defeat was Exeter City’s 4th defeat in the last 5 games.

Exeter City 0		Chesterfield 2
01 Krysiak		01 Lee
02 Butterfield		25 Talbot
03 Woodman		15 Humphreys
07 Sercombe		08 Togwell
04 Bennett		23 Evatt
15 Moore-Taylor		04 Hird
32 Wheeler		07 Darikwa
35 Gill		02 Banks
20 Nichols		17 Doyle
25 Parkin		09 Richards
11 Davies		24 McFadzean
Substitutes		Substitutes
05 Baldwin		05 Morsy
10 Gow		10 O’Shea
19 O’Flynn		16 Devitt
21 Gosling		21 Gnanduillet
22 Keohane		22 Brown
29 Grimes		28 McSheffrey
30 Pym		33 Mason
Ref: Carl Berry
Att: 3,449 of which 138 were Chesterfield fans
Substitutions
Exeter City		Gow on for Parkin 57′, Grimes on for Wheeler 69′, and Baldwin on for Moore-Taylor 69′
Chesterfield		Gnanduillet on for McFadzean 60′, Brown on for Richards 75′ and O’Shea on for Doyle 85′
Goalscorers
Exeter City
Chesterfield		Banks 48′ Richards 70′
Discipline
Exeter City		Yellow card for Butterfield
Chesterfield		Yellow card for Gnanduillet
Match Stats
Exeter City		Chesterfield
49	Possession %	7
51	Shots on target	7
6	Shots off target	4
5	Corners	10
7	Fouls	8
1	Yellow cards	1
0	Red Cards	0

Match Reports

Exeter City – http://www.exetercityfc.co.uk/fixtures-results/match-report/?matchid=3647058&tcmuri=975366
Chesterfield – http://www.chesterfield-fc.co.uk/news/article/20131220-exeter-report-1247996.aspx

YouTube Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8eGMkFpCO8

Quotes

Paul Tisdale speaking on the official site:-

We didn’t take our moments in the first half. We didn’t show enough composure or we rushed things – we were jumpy with our decisions.

That’s really where we missed our chance today – about four or five times in the first time the ball was at our feet in the penalty box and with them scrambling a bit and with them under pressure, we didn’t take those moments at all and show enough class around the goal.”

It was another moment a minute after half-time, which means all that counts for nothing if you don’t do your job.  We’ve adopted the same system now for well over 12 months and we’ve been good at it, but we’ve slipped so that’s something for me to address.

The rest of it then becomes frustrating because you’re losing, and the focus turns to weaknesses and what we did wrong.

Arron Davies said after the match

I thought in the first half we were really competitive and showed a lot of spirit and determination – we did the ugly side of the game, which you have to when conditions are so tough,” Davies said.  “But we lacked a bit of quality in the final third – if we had gotten that first goal, it would have been massive.

We were probably the better team going forward in the first half, but we didn’t work their ‘keeper enough.  I thought we did have them on the back foot, but their goalkeeper has probably gone away thinking that he’s had a fairly easy night.

It’s been a strength of ours in the last 18 months since we’ve gone to zonal defending, so that’s disappointing to have conceded a few like that at home in the last couple of games,” Davies continued.  “Especially when the game is on a knife-edge – those are vital moments in games.

The second was a sucker-punch too – the game gets a bit spread and if you go for it a bit more you expose yourself at the back.

Paul Cook on the win, talking to the Chesterfield official site.

We wanted to win tonight, we were desperate to win tonight to go into those two home games at Christmas in a good position.

The work ethic of the group since the Southend game going into Oldham, Plymouth and tonight, it’s answered a lot of questions. It wasn’t pretty at times, the last two games haven’t been pretty. We’ve left a couple of flair players out to try and have a little more desire to win the game.