Interview

‘For some reason, our desire was missing’

Bould

Steve Bould was left disappointed with his side’s performance after our unbeaten start to 2020 came to an end following a 3-0 defeat to Liverpool.

Morgan Boyes opened the scoring midway through the first half, before Dal Varesanovic doubled the Reds’ lead before half-time. Luis Longstaff scored Liverpool’s third which condemned us to our first defeat of the year.

We spoke to our head coach after the match and this is what he said:

on the performance…

It was by a long way, our worst performance of the year. I know it was tricky conditions, but Liverpool, I have to give them enormous credit they were very good. They were a very young side too, but we just didn’t compete from the first whistle to the last really. We didn’t play to the conditions, we looked like we were at the end of the season.

on the inclusion of under-18s players…

It’s great and hats off to the younger boys because they did okay in difficult circumstances and perhaps weren’t helped as much as they could have been by one or two of the older boys and that’s a disappointment from me. I’ve not said that all year, as a general rule, we’ve had a competitive team and with a bit of desire. For a strange reason it was missing.

on Joel Lopez starting…

Physically, he did very well. Some of his positions weren’t great at times but he can hold his head up as could Sam Greenwood. The younger kids did okay and one or two of the older boys didn’t have their best performances by a log margin today.

on Trae Coyle returning to the side…

Trae’s been out for a little while and he did struggle today, I have to say. He’s been out for a while and we have missed him, but it wasn’t one of his better performances at all.

on Tyreece John-Jules and James Olayinka going out on loan…

It’s great for their development. We wanted one or two of these boys to go out on loan too which would have made us a little more lighter. When you look at Liverpool today, they were very young and maybe a year or two younger than us on average so the industry demands  a lot of things and I think we have to learn a bit of that to get all our players on loan.

By Sam Cox