In his own words: Phil Parkinson post-Oxford United

Read back the key points covered by the manager following Saturday's defeat to the U's

Two late goals saw Wanderers' suffer their first home league defeat of the season against Oxford United on Saturday.

Speaking to bwfc.co.uk after the final whistle, here is what manager Phil Parkinson had to say...



On his side's performance...
We weren’t good enough. We’re very disappointed with the performance today. We lacked quality in terms of our final ball. 

I lost track the amount of times set pieces and crosses went into the goalkeeper’s hands. We didn’t produce a final bit of quality and without the ball we were too open. 

I feel that we’ve gone a team who, at the start of the season, accepted we had problems and set ourselves up to be strong and hard to beat, to bringing in that extra quality in on deadline day and going away from what we were all about during that period. 

We need to get back to that because when you’re not producing in the final third, you’ve got to make sure that there is a discipline and resilience about us without the ball. Both sides of that were lacking today.

On his side's recent loss of form...
We set ourselves up at the start of the season, whatever shape we played, to have a discipline about the way we played. 

Discipline can be five yards of hard work to get back into position to make sure the pitch isn’t massive when you lose the ball on the counter-attack or the switch of play. 

We want to be tight and compact when we don’t have the ball but we didn’t have that today. There was too much space on the pitch for my liking.

We’ve got to keep going and accept the criticism. It is warranted from the last two games as we have not been good enough. 

We need to get back to a resilient, hard-working, and hard to beat performance. When we’re not producing in the final third, we have to make sure that we are strong and not looking vulnerable. 

That’s what we were earlier in the season but we’ve recently gone away from that. We need to work towards that and we’ll need to certainly be like that next week against Swindon.

On the treble substitution...
We have to be careful regarding Gary and Zach because of their injuries, but the lads who came on did not have the impact that we needed them to. 

We lacked energy. I was looking for an impact and it didn’t come. That can be the difference in which team wins and loses a game.

On Gary Madine and Zach Clough...
It’s good to see Gary and Zach back. I thought they did well to be fair to them and they’ve come through the game unscathed, which is good.

On team selection for Tuesday's clash with Blackpool...
When you lose, it’s always good to have a game. Other players will get opportunities on Tuesday. We’ll be thinking long and hard about our team selection for that game.

And a final word on the defeat to Oxford...
I think there is a lot of soul-searching to be done, certainly from myself. The supporters and the Chairman have been brilliant to me since I came in. 

I am in charge of the team and I feel I have let a lot of people down with that performance. I don’t think it was good enough. We need to find a way of playing and get a shape and a discipline about us that is better than it was today.    

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