First half not good enough for BBM

AS entertaining as Saturday’s contest against Wigan was, and as pleased as he was with the spirited comeback, Brian Barry-Murphy couldn’t shake off the disappointment of his side’s first-half display.

Wigan deservedly led 2-1 at the interval with Dale down to ten men and BBM said it had been nowhere near good enough.

“The Crown Oil Arena is the place to be for entertainment at the moment - I think our fans would have enjoyed it if they were here,” he said.

“But we didn’t really enjoy the first half I’m being honest and it was nowhere near the level we want to play at.

“The past two home games have been brilliant in terms of the lads coming together and showing their spirit and what they are about. I have just said to them, though, that I feel as if it’s my job to demand the highest standards that I know they can achieve. We haven’t done that in the first half so as a result we left ourselves with a mountain to climb again, and obviously Jim’s red card complicated matters.

“We didn’t play well [in the first half] and we can’t disguise that. Yes, we have loads of different situations to deal with in terms of who is available and who isn’t available, but we’re much more capable than what we showed in the first half in terms of what we can produce, but we just didn’t do it.”

BBM had no issues with the decision to show McNulty a red card, and it left him with a quandary for the second half – in the event he made one change at half-time, bringing on Ryan McLaughlin for Kwadwo Baah, to allow Jimmy Keohane to move to centre-half.

“Naturally I didn’t want to take Kwadwo off at half-time because of the form that he’s in, but we had to find a way to give ourselves a foot hold in the game.

“We still wanted to remain positive and leave two strikers on the pitch - the lads are really responding to that positive nature - and Ryan McLaughlin gave us an attacking nature on that side that ultimately provided the outlet for that final finish.”