Speaking after the defeat at Leyton Orient, manager Darren Sarll rued his side not taking two early opportunities as Boro created nine goal-scoring opportunities at the Matchroom Stadium.
“Their (opening) goal rocked us,” said Darren. “I think that’s natural. Goals change the psychology of the game. After two really, really early opportunities, if you take them the game is completely different. Away from home, you slow down rather than speed up, you become controlled rather than desperate and at 1-0 you think to yourself ‘no problem, we’ll get back into the game’ and that lead to a bit more desperation. I felt after we conceded that first goal, tactically we came away from what we are and that’s what left us vulnerable.
“I’m more disappointed that people have travelled tonight to see our side be beaten 3-0. I’m more disappointed for the fans, the chairman and the board who have all come here with optimism, as the players have on the back of a good point and a really good win at Ipswich. We believe we can come to these places now and win. We setup to win these games and that’s why we pass the ball in that way and we were so open early on because we wanted to take hold of the game.
“When you get the chances you need to take them. Their centre-forwards have taken their chances. Regardless of anything else that happened on the pitch tonight, their centre-forwards did their job and their defenders did their job.”
A busy August continues with the visit of Luton Town this Saturday afternoon in an all-ticket fixture.
“This is one game in our calendar that is of real significance in terms of pride and being able to hold your head up high in our local area.
“We want strong characters, we’ve got strong characters, these are good people. We’ve had a bad night and we’ve had a bad night for maybe completely different reasons to what we normally have a bad night with. We’ve been a little bit soft around our own penalty area and we’ve not taken the chances we’ve created. We’ve got to go back to work.”
Tickets for Saturday's ALL-TICKET home game against Luton Town remain on General Sale for Stevenage fans in-store (Wednesday 1pm-7pm, Thursday 10am-5pm or Friday 10am-5pm) or online at www.borotickets.co.uk until 23.59 on Friday.