Me: Given that that is now just 1 win in 10 how do you react to today’s defeat?
Steve Baker: Defeat,s disappointing, I’m not necessarily a manager that looks into stats too much in regards to four games, six games, eight games, ten games. Obviously, I know we’re not on a good run at the minute. Ultimately the only stat I’ll look at is the league table, how many games we’ve played and how many points we’ve got. I’m not overly happy with that at the minute it needs to be a little more but I’d be more concerned if we were playing badly. We’re not playing badly but at the minute if it can go wrong it’s gone wrong. Whether that’s injuries or as you saw today referee’s decisions have played a massive part in the last couple of games and ultimately cost us any chance of winning games, which it did today. But listen, it’s something that we’re trying to turn round. I don’t think we’re far off because, alright we’ve lost 5-1 today, but we’ve had 9 men for 35 minutes. But previous games we’ve picked a couple of draws up in there, 1-1, 2-2, we’ve lost 3-2, we’ve lost 2-1, we’ve lost 1-0. We’re very, very close in games but we’re maybe just lacking that little bit of quality in a couple of key areas which we need to improve on and which we are improving on and a couple in this week and hopefully one or two new faces in. We’ve got a tough Christmas coming up but I’m not daft I’ve been doing it long enough to know our current form, no matter how you dress it up, isn’t great so we need to get some points on the board sooner rather than later.
Me: What was your reaction to today’s two sendings off?
Steve Baker: The two sending off’s and I’ll add another decision into that as well which was the penalty we should’ve had; I thought the three decisions from the referee were a joke. The first decision obviously I’m miles away, I can’t see if it’s handball or not. I was led to believe now that if it wasn’t a deliberate handball it was a penalty and a yellow card, which I’ve now been told was different, seems to change week after week. But I spoke to the right back, he said he didn’t handball it. He showed me a big imprint on his shoulder where the ball hit him. He’s an honest lad I’m only gonna go with what he’s told me. Second one, for me isn’t a red card. It’s a late tackle, might be a little bit high from where he was but he’s not gone over the top of the ball, it’s one foot, he’s not off the ground, it’s a yellow card but they got round the referee as quick as they could but I think he’s sent him off before the bloke even hit the floor then conveniently got straight back up afterwards. So, you’re on the back of two really tough decisions anyway and then at 2-1 with 9 men we get, for me, a blatant penalty, but he doesn’t give it. Linesman’s five yards away, referee’s ten yards away, between them nothing. Five minutes later it’s 3-1 and it’s game over. So, it’s so difficult to take them decisions because you work hard all week to get to these games, try and get something out of it. The boys were putting in a good shift and then a lot of football at this level is decided on bad decisions, either from players or officials. Today it was the officials.
Me: When you were down to 9 men did you feel you competed well? Maybe even better than when you were with 11 men?
Steve Baker: Yeah, it’s not something I’d like to do on a regular basis. I couldn’t fault the boys from start to finish today. We’re going with 9 men we’ve got three people playing out of position, we’ve got a couple of injuries and knocks during that as well. We did compete, and there was a part of me that thought if we could nick a goal, I would literally have gone two banks of four no forwards and try to nick a draw because I’ve done it at a previous club before we had a similar scenario to today. Once the third goal goes in you’re never gonna claw back two, but we still created chances with 9 men and that was the frustrating thing but that was good. I felt the lads were brave they could easily have not wanted the ball and gone hiding but they kept going which is all we’ll ever ask them to do.
Me: Did you feel you saw enough positives in today for something to build on in the future and get back to winning ways in future games?
Steve Baker: Yep without a doubt one hundred percent. Apart from obviously the final result, which if anyone looks in the paper tomorrow or online and sees two big fat red cards, everyone’s gonna read into that exactly what it is. Because normally when you see a big result in our league the first thing you look at is was there any sending offs and 9 times out of 10 there is because they do affect games. But no when you’re on a bad run you need to take as many positives as you can.
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