Gary Bowyer suffered his first competitive defeat as Blackpool boss at Morecambe on Saturday following league and cup win wins against Exeter and Bolton, respectively, before that.
Jack Dunn and Michael Rose scored the goals for Morecambe as they came back from a Brad Potts goal that looked as though could bring Blackpool a third successive win but the home side hit back to win two-one.
Bowyer told the Official Website the defeat was tough to take.
‘We started the game ever so well first-half and to concede right on the stroke of half-time, to what looked like a soft penalty, left us disappointed at half-time. But I don’t think we showed enough in the second-half, if I’m being brutally honest, to have actually gone on and won the game.’
He added the equalising goal from Morecambe on half time saw Blackpool lose some momentum whereas it gave the Shrimps a ‘bit of impetus’ with the winner also disappointing him as it would have the following at the Globe Arena.
‘I thought we came out in the second-half and started not bad, but it was disappointing to then concede the goal that we did. It was our corner and they broke on us and countered on us, and that shouldn’t be happening. It’s a situation that disappointed us massively because we had a wonderful following today.’
Bowyer finished by commenting on the fans, praising those who followed at our seaside rivals.
‘The fans made a right racket and I’m disappointed that we couldn’t get the result for them. I’m sure they’ve seen signs of what we’re looking to do though, especially first-half, and we’ll now look to put in a good performance at Barnet on Tuesday night.’
Tom Aldred himself is hopeful this can be a defeat we’ll look back on as being part of the learning curve.
Aldred, also speaking to the Official Website, didn’t feel it was a match Blackpool should have lost but wants it to be one we’ll learn from.
‘Hopefully we`ll look back on it later in the season and think to ourselves how did we lose the game. We could be looking back and thinking it`s a good thing we did because it`s a big learning curve for us. We`ve got to manage the game better. We needed to get through to half-time because I thought we were excellent in the first half, but the penalty lifted them.’
Much like Bowyer was Aldred, from a defenders point of view particularly, wasn’t happy with the counter attack goal that allowed Morecambe to win the match.
‘We put a lot of the defensive players up there, we`ve got to be box clever in terms of switching on for the break. We’ve got to learn from it and learn from it fast because it`s a major disappointment.’
Aldred concluded that we can’t dwell too much on this as we’ve got the match against Barnet to come in midweek so we move on and get ready for that.
‘The good thing about the Football League is there`s always an opportunity to put it right and it`s a good chance at Barnet. It`s going to be a tough game in terms of the way they play but we`ve got to be ready for it.’
