Chris Wilder on the draw with York
Chris Wilder was pulling no punches as he looked back at Saturday’s 0-0 draw with York City. The U’s picked up a point but once again failed to make possession count against a resilient York side. Chris told Yellow Player that his side need to start picking up more points at home as the season enters its final third:
“It’s a struggle at home at the moment there’s no getting away from it” he said after the game. “We are lacking a bit of spark, a bit of confidence, but we’ve got to find a way”.
York got men behind the ball quickly, but the U’s boss believes his side should have enough quality to find a way through when teams defend deep:
“We should have had an overload and an advantage somewhere else along the line, but It’s difficult. The front four are finding it hard to create, but we have a lot of positive players. We had Damian Batt, Liam Davis, Adam Chapman and the four forwards playing, who are all very positive. We are certainly going for it, but it’s a struggle for us at the moment. Nobody is going to help us we need to help ourselves.”
United now face Gillingham, Port Vale and Rotherham in their next three games, a tough looking run of matches. Chris, however, believes his side will raise their game against three of the promotion favourites.
“We’ve got a very tough week coming up with three very difficult games. I think we need to adopt a backs against the wall mentality. I wasn’t shouting after the game, they are disappointed with the standards and decisions and so was I, because as I've said all along they are a lot better than that. They are far better players, they have shown it at previous clubs and they’ve shown it here in games and from Monday to Friday in training. They are loads better than they showed on Saturday.
“But this confidence issue is obviously a massive thing in any sport and especially in football when it’s not going as well as you would like it to have done. We had a great result last week and we wanted a win against York but we didn’t get it. Now the players have to have a look at themselves in terms of their standards and decisions and they need to be brave and bold and they have to find that from within, starting at Gillingham on Tuesday night.”
See the whole interview plus reaction from Damian Batt and Michael Raynes and match highlights in Yellow Player.