Manager reflects on Bishop Auckland defeat

Mick Mulhern gives his reaction to Whitley’s 5-1 defeat at title chasing Bishop Auckland. “They came flying out of the traps as we would have expected, fast and very direct. They’ve got two good centre forwards and attacking wide men and all the time they were causing problems trying to get in behind us so it put us on the back foot a bit.  But the positives were that we responded. They scored after four minutes, and we scored after seven with a decent goal. After that they looked a bit vulnerable from free kicks. We scored from the first one and almost got another from a good free kick but Andrei couldn’t quite get on the end of it.

“Then they came back strongly and scored twice but I think we were a bit sloppy, not putting challenges in and letting them take control of situations and that’s what led to those two goals, which is disappointing. But at the end of the half Olly hit the bar and Ben (Christensen) almost scored from another free kick so we were creating chances.

“So the message at half time was ‘Can we go out and win the second half?’ We’ve gone out and started well but then we conceded the fourth from our throw in, giving them possession and from the breakaway there was a coming together in the box, ok it was a penalty and we accept that, but at 4-1 we had our heads down and the fourth goal quickly led to the fifth.

“We then made one or two changes and also changed the shape to see if we could get back in the game, but to be honest it was lost so all we could really do was make sure they couldn’t cause any more damage.

“We’ve been a bit naïve giving the ball away and that’s something we’ve got to deal with, to be better on the ball. We’ve been punished for giving the ball away by a very good side!”