Planet Swans ArchivesPoortvliet told saintsfc.co.uk “I’m disappointed that we lost 3-0, because we had a lot of possession but never really looked dangerous. There was no power. I had the feeling sometimes that we played OK but the end product was not always there.
“You can enjoy this type of game as a neutral spectator because it was a high-tempo game between two attacking teams. We obviously wanted to win, but I sympathise with the fans, and I understand their frustration because they have come a long way and wanted to see their team win as well.
“We have a lot of young players but we won’t change our attacking philosophy, but perhaps we will look at the formation and the individual players. We will win again, and we will start the battle for more points and confidence on Tuesday night.
“We rarely come back from 1-0 down, so it has a lot to do with confidence because when we take the lead we usually win,
“We need to make the boys into men and we did that against Sheffield United where we played well, but perhaps today came a little to soon for young players who are not used to playing three games in a week.
“They made it 1-0 and until that time there had been nothing wrong. After that I think they didn’t do anything special in the box either and we looked like we could get a couple of possibilities but we were not there to put them in the net.
“In the second half we had the second goal against us and you could see we were playing well, but there was no belief in scoring and no belief in a better result.”
He continued: “In the first half we missed a little bit of finesse, of someone who can go on and that’s why I put Andrew Surman out to the left and Adam Lallana into the middle to create more possibilities and for their football to come out.
“Adam was not so fit when I see it. He had struggled over the last couple of days and you could see he needed too many touches to do something which means he was not quick in his body.
“We changed it in the hope that maybe we would get more power in the game but then it was 2-0. We had a couple of crosses but there was no end product and it looked we didn’t have enough power to do it.
“At half time I asked them, ‘Why not shoot?’. They often chose to pass to one another or play too much football. Sometimes winning is the only thing that’s important and the players need to learn that quickly.”
