Well, Lee - it feels as though we've been here before.

I have to say it does, and we're talking about a disappointing result. The performance was bitty and horrible, like the match. The first half was awful but I thought we improved in the second half; there was more about us but we should have been talking about a game that was not pleasing on the eye, but was at least a 1-0 win, and I think it's the story of our season that we've contrived to give the opposition something out of the game again.

What were those lads doing, faffing about at the back?

I've said to them- the younger lads - that they've really got to understand what football's about. Football's really about winners and winning, but at the moment we're also-rans, because we're not doing the right things at the right times. We're not sensing danger or taking the gifts that are given to us. We were under no pressure in the second half but we still contrived only to draw the game. It is extremely frustrating. I tried to open the game up with young Jackson's pace and decided to take Kev off since it was his first game for a month; my worry was that he might have pulled up with a tight hamstring with twenty minutes to go, and you've already taken a centre-half off. In the end we should still not have conceded.

Hereford have won 1-0 at Rotherham, and we should be talking about a 1-0 victory here, against a team which hasn't had much luck of late. At least we've got something out of the game - we've seen too many occasions here where opponents have done nothing and come away with all three points. But it is scant consolation in a game where we got in front, and that should have been that. It is not good enough and I have to have a long, hard think about how we change things. We missed Peter Leven's ability to get on the ball and make things happen, but that's not an excuse.

It did look as though you weren't firing on all cylinders?

But this is the point - you can't play fantastically well every week and win every week. Its impossible. No-one's ever done it. Football is a competitive game but we don't look like a side that can snatch that last-minute winner, say - you know, from the free kick that goes in and someone gets on the end of it - those are the signs that are worrying me more than anything, and that's a very hard quantity to find.

Maybe it's more experience, and the disappointment we are going through now will stand us in good stead, but we've got to realise that and change because all the while there's a group of ten teams fighting for something at the top, but we're also-rans at the moment.

You will have the opportunity to freshen things up soon.

Absolutely. We need more guile; we need more "nous." It is difficult to get the players in that you want because everybody wants those sort of players, but I cannot keep coming out here and making excuses for youth and inexperience. We tried one or two things before the deadline but that didn't happen; it is certainly something we've got to look at. The most important thing is to stop conceding those soft goals.

LEE RICHARDSON was talking to GEOFF MITCHELL

for SPIREITES WORLD

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