Steven Schumacher says he and his teammates are “gutted” to lose on the opening day of the season but that they won’t be beating themselves up about the display.
“We are gutted that we have lost the game but overall it is the best we have played in general so there are positives to take from it.
“Goals are key, obviously. Especially early on, the first game of the season people are a little bit nervous and I think if we had of scored that first goal it would have settled us down a little bit.
“As it turned out, they scored a goal on a counter attack which we should do better with and they have gone on the ascendency from there. I thought the game was pretty even throughout and their goal late on killed us off just when we looked as though we might nick something from the game.”
The margins between victory and defeat can be minor. Schumacher says he felt as though that was the case today and that the game plan worked for the majority of the game.
“We played four central midfield players in a diamond formation and that was to counteract what Notts County were going to do. We knew that they would try and pass the ball through midfield so we wanted to congest it and I think we did nullify them for the majority of the game.
“We knew they would not be able to deal with our directness and balls in-behind, and I thought their centre-halves panicked a lot to be honest with you. The bounce of the ball and a little bit more fortune we might have scored that first goal and the game might have been different.”
Goals have been hard to come by for Stevenage since pre-season started but Schumacher believes they are not far away.
“It is obvious to see that we are lacking goals, we haven’t scored many in pre-season and we haven’t scored again today but the signs are there.
“We are creating chances, in the last pre-season game and again today I though we looked threatening, especially from set-pieces and on another day, they will go in and goals change games.”