Phil SumblerSteve Cooper says he was frustrated after the 2-2 draw at Nottingham Forest but I am not sure that frustration comes close to how he should be feeling after watching his side just about throw away their play off chances in a little over 72 hour period.
After the way we threw away a deserved point against Leeds on Sunday, we went and topped it at Forest by twice throwing away the league to allow Forest to score twice from outside the box – something Cooper said that we had been working on in training ahead of the game.
That he described as ‘frustrating’ but surely it is worse than that? It would be bad enough if we let them do it once but to let it happen twice is just plain stupid. We had done all the hard work to take the lead not once but twice only to see it disappear by gifting space to a player that we know can do exactly what he did and that is score from distance.
We got ourselves back in front by getting in areas we thought we could hurt them, and they looked nervous around their box.
We’ve gone 2-1 up, and then we just wanted the game to carry on as it was, although we knew that would be tough.
If you look at it, Forest have scored something like 87 per cent of their goals through either Lewis Grabban or shots from outside the box.
That was something that was in our game plan, so for them to score from two shots outside the box is frustrating for myself and the players. – Steve Cooper
On a night when a win was the minimum standard we have again fallen short. We have lost 13 times in the league this season and followed 11 of those 13 defeats with a draw which I think tells you much about the resilience of the team and the manager. Had we managed just 2 more wins from those 13 games then we would now have our future in our own hands, instead we are hoping that – on top of needing two wins – both Cardiff and Millwall lose once. Where there is hope there is possibility but the reality is we have come up short too often this season.
