Reflecting after the 2-0 defeat at Southend on Saturday, Stevenage manager Graham Westley said the atmosphere at Roots Hall and the mistakes made by his players were lessons to learn from.
He told us, “We let the game go in that first 10-15 mins. There was a big home crowd and we haven’t faced that type of pressure previously. We’ve played away games but against lower level sides without the crowd in and we didn’t stay on top of the game as we planned to. We let our organisation go defensively, the back four shape we lost for the first goal and Tom let his man come in off the line for the second goal.
"They weren’t typical Stevenage goals that we concede. If a side does something special then great, but one long ball to get flicked on and end up in the back of our net isn’t what we do.
"I go back to what I said on Tuesday - we’ve got lads like Tom, Wellsy and Sam who were all playing non-league football last year. They’re playing today in probably the biggest arenas of their career so far and that brings extra pressures. That can distract you, that can let your focus slip. We really need to call upon our experienced players to hold things together, pull it together and not all of those were at it today.
"So it was a disappointing opening 20-25 minutes, we got ourselves together and carved out some good chances, but it took too long for us to get together and we weren’t clinical enough when the chances came.
"I don’t think we can complain we didn’t win the game, albeit we did show some fight and we did get back into it second half. We left ourselves too much to do and we don’t want to be coming to places like this and going two behind early on."
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