Taylor slams Exeter display in loss to Northampton

Posted Sunday, March 10, 2019 by PA

Exeter manager Matt Taylor was left deeply unimpressed by his side’s ‘weak’ performance during their 2-1 defeat at Northampton.

The Grecians succumbed to back-to-back losses after Aaron Pierre’s first-half opener was added to by Andy Williams just shy of the hour mark, with Aaron Martin’s header nothing more than a consolation.

Exeter have now dropped out of the play-off places in League Two and Taylor said: “We didn’t compete well enough and we didn’t play the conditions well enough.

“We’ve got good ball players but they get taken out of the picture when they don’t get the ball and get control of possession.

“We didn’t match them anywhere on the pitch. We really struggled at both ends and they really imposed their physicality on the game and full credit for them for that because they played that game a lot better than we did.

“They were a lot more effective. As much as we can prepare our boys for knowing where the ball is going, they’ve still got to deal with it and the goals were an example of how weak we were at times.

“They’ve got to understand the game and understand they’ll be put under pressure and there’ll be contact and physicality. The ball isn’t going to be clean at their feet. As much as we want our players to get the ball at their feet, that happened very few times and we had no control.

“That’s the basics in League Two. Before you start any game, they are the basics. If you want to give yourself a chance of winning, you have to do the basics and we didn’t do that.”

By contrast, Northampton manager Keith Curle was delighted with his side’s third straight win.

He said: “We were playing against a very good team who have operated in the play-offs for the majority of the year but, on the balance of play, they probably had only 12 or 15 minutes when they played how they wanted to.

“The credit for that goes to us because we stopped them from playing and nullified their threats. I’m disappointed with the goal we conceded but I thought we managed the game very well.

“The second goal was excellent and then again we had the manage the game in the second half and we did that very well.

“David Cornell maybe made one very good save low down but, apart from that, we managed the game.

“We got on the front foot in the first half and handled the departure of Marvin Sordell to injury very well because Andy Williams came on and slotted straight into the system.

“A home win was the only thing that has been missing because our away form has been very good.”