Forest have to cut out the soft goals, warns boss
MATCH ANALYSIS AND REACTION:
NOTTINGHAM Forest fell to a second successive Championship defeat, beaten 2-1 at home by Bournemouth.
In front of a packed City Ground, the Reds were unable to take advantage of their opponents being reduced to 10 men on the hour mark.
David Brooks put the visitors in front in the first half, only for Scott Mckenna to equalise after the break.
Barely 10 minutes later, though, Phil Billing restored the Cherries’ advantage. Despite Brooks being sent off for a second bookable offence, Forest did not manage to find another way through.
Here is what boss Chris Hughton said at the final whistle.
What are your thoughts on the game?
“It’s very disappointing. “The atmosphere was brilliant, as we expected, and in difficult periods of the game the crowd lifted us. “But the game is about goals. “In possession, at times we were good and showed glimpses of quality. There were some decent performances.
“But we conceded two really soft goals. If you give a team that has got quality players - like they have moments, then they can hurt you. That’s what they did.”
Was it particularly frustrating to concede the second goal just after you had got back in the game?
“Yes. They were both poor goals, but we had got back in the game.
“At that stage, if we weren’t going to win the game, we certainly didn’t look like losing the game. “Those are the moments. “When they went down to 10 men, they dropped. But I thought we pushed and got the ball into wide areas. Alex Mighten was a threat on one side and Jordan Gabriel on the other side.
“The right things were there. But you’ve got to be able to do that with some discipline. It means, when the opposition break, you’ve got to show that defensive responsibility to make sure we stay in the game.
“That was the most disappointing thing that, at 1-1, a game we looked like we could go on and win, we didn’t.”
How tempted were you to make changes earlier, once they had gone down to 10 men?
“It’s about momentum. I thought we had good momentum. At that stage, I thought we were still threatening. That’s the balance.
“It’s finding the balance between keeping that momentum and adding a bit of freshness.
“We changed the system as the game went on, putting Philip (Zinckernagel) in a deeper role - thinking he could be more of a purveyor of the ball than higher up the pitch. “I can’t fault the players as regards
the amount of possession we had in their half. It’s just the quality moments that you need, which they had for their two goals.”
Two defeats in the first two games, does it worry you at all?
“Winning games is what the sport is about. You want a team that can pick up points, be competitive and win football matches.
“It always worries me when we lose any football match.
“We’ve got another one here on Wednesday night (against Blackburn Rovers). We can’t start feeling sorry for ourselves, because then there will only be one outcome.
“We have to dust ourselves down and make sure we continue to show a lot of the good things we did today, but be more resilient.”
Do you think you need new signings in before Wednesday night?
“We need people in full stop. The ideal situation would be to have got players in as early as possible, but it’s been a difficult window - not just for us but for most clubs.
“It’s not through lack of effort or trying that we haven’t brought players in.
“We know we have to strengthen the squad, that goes without saying. Whether that’s in the next few days or weeks, I don’t know, but that’s our intention.”
What did you make of your first experience of being a manager in front of 25,000 at the City Ground?
“I know the noise levels here from having been in the opposition dugout, so I knew what to expect and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.
“There was a wonderful football atmosphere.
“I don’t think there would be many, if any, crowds in the Championship that will have had the numbers we had today.
“As a team, we’ve got to make sure we encourage them and that they like what they see. That’s about getting results for them.”
Lewis Grabban was back involved. Was he not ready to start?
“If I look at where we’ve been with the squad... even Lyle Taylor, who I thought did well in the last game, but has missed a lot of pre-season.
“Lewis was probably the last one to come back training and has only really trained this week. He certainly wasn’t in a position to start.”
If you don’t manage to get any new signings in before next week, how do you get more out of the group you currently have, in order to get a result?
“If I look at today, the worst part of the game was the two goals we conceded.
“We’ve conceded two goals in our last two League games. If we do that again, to win a game we would have to score three goals.
“We’ve got to make ourselves more competitive as a team.
“I was really pleased with some of the offensive play I saw and some of the combinations we’ve got. But we have got to do more as a team to allow us to win games.”