Steven Schumacher wants Wanderers to try and find some positivity to end the season as he embarks on a re-building plan at the Toughsheet Community Stadium, writes Pete Oliver.
Wanderers’ fading play-off hopes were finally extinguished with a 4-2 defeat at Lincoln City which leaves them two dead rubbers to try and regain some momentum while Schumacher gets cracking behind the scenes.
“I just think we've just got to try and get a performance right and put a whole performance in,” said the Whites’ head coach after seeing his side fight back from 2-0 down before shipping two more second-half goals to stay with a negative goal difference on the back of a fourth successive defeat.
“We're going to Peterborough at the weekend and on their day they’re really good going forward, so we're going to have to find a way around to defend better.
“We might forget about playing with the ball for the next couple of days when we get back into training and just try and focus on getting us a little bit more solid because it's just too easy to score and to play against at the minute. .
“We need to figure that out and try and get a result in the one after that against Stevenage. We want to try and end the season on some sort of positive because to lose seven out of nine is just crazy.
“From being where we were at in the season with so much confidence, full of energy, ready to go for it after visiting Bristol Rovers we fell apart. It shows a lot about where we're at and what we've done.
“I am shocked. Confidence is a huge part in football. The Rotherham game, I just sensed that after that result, because we played so well and didn't win it, just deflated everybody. I'm shocked about it because I didn't see it coming.
“I didn't see it coming because what I've seen from the group since we'd been here had been nothing but positive up until that point (at Bristol). But the last six, seven, eight games, whatever it's been, with just the Wigan result in between which has shown that we can compete and can fight and scrap, has just been really frustrating.
“That shocked me a little bit, how badly we fell off the cliff. It's probably opened my eyes a little bit as well to the scale of what needs to be done.”
After arriving at Wanderers at the end of January, Schumacher oversaw a run of five wins and a draw in six games before a 3-2 loss at Bristol Rovers in early March started the rot.
He has been unable to arrest that slump since and will now focus on doing what he can to re-shape and strengthen the squad in harness with new sporting director Fergal Harkin.
“There’s loads of work to do and we can get cracking pretty much straight away now because it's obviously clear what the picture looks like,” Shumacher added. “I think we felt for a couple of games that chances are we're going to be in this division and now we know.
“We'll be speaking next week, as was planned, and try and figure it out It's going to be a challenge. We haven't got loads of players out of contact, so we need to make sure that we're wise in the decisions that we make and really focus on the key areas that we need; some characters and some more quality in the areas where we're short.
“We can get going straight away. I'll be on the phone tonight on the way home and we’ll be on it.”
Watch the full post-match interview with the head coach on Wanderers TV