Jim’s on-field focus challenge for Dale
JIM Mcnulty will try to keep his Rochdale squad focused entirely on their upcoming National League matches and ignore the ‘noise’ currently going on around the club.
The potential takeover of Dale by American firm World Soccer Holdings LLC picked up pace last week with the Texasbased firm signing a letter of intent to buy the club.
But Mcnulty insists his challenge is to maintain focus on the pitch.
Dale lost 2-1 at Ebbsfleet United on Saturday, dropping down to 13th in the table. They were scheduled to take on Barnet at The Hive on Tuesday evening and ahead of that game, Mcnulty said: “My challenge to the players, among the backdrop of all the noise that is going on at the football club right now, my challenge is ‘how focused can we remain to try and surprise people and outperform what is going on at the club?’
“I’m not playing it down, all the noise around the club is incredibly serious, the survival of the club is the most important thing.
“But our challenge is to try and remain tunnelvisioned on winning the next game.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t replicate our last performance on Saturday, but still we shouldn’t be going away with anything less than a draw, and that’s being as fair as I can possibly be.
“What does it mean for the rest of the season? I don’t really know, all I know is that we should try to think no more than our next performance. We’re back on a train down here to Barnet on Tuesday for another big game and I don’t think we can focus on anything ahead of that.”
Dale conceded in the 92nd minute to lose on the road at Ebbsfleet and Mcnulty shared his disappointment following the full-time whistle: “I can’t believe we lost the game, to be honest, looking at the game, in its entirety, based on chances, I don’t know how we lost it.
“Cian Hayes has a great chance eight yards out, and unfortunately the ‘keeper saves it, Kairo Mitchell down the side, good chance, Cameron
John hits the crossbar, Cian does a good bit of work on the other side. I just don’t really remember Ebbsfleet doing anything that created any danger for us.
“We have to take our medicine and accept it. We gave them two goals.
“That’s what we feel disappointed about in our camp. We accept it and take it on the chin, we have to – but we gave them two goals in a game where they really struggled to create anything against us.
“I really thought the game was coasting along to what was going to be a draw because I just felt we weren’t going to convert any of the cnaces we were having. But ultimately, in that coasting mentality we were maybe in, it cost us and we were stung in the last minutes.
“I don’t know if the fact we played on Tuesday and had to travel while they didn’t have either had an effect, I don’t know.
Meanwhile, Mcnulty confirmed that D’mani Mellor and Tyrese Sinclair have both picked up injuries when explaining their exclusion from his side on Saturday.
The Dale head coach explained why the forwards were absent from
the squad, as well as highlighting why midfielder Harvey Gilmour was also missing.
“D’mani Mellor pulled
a hamstring in the last game, unfortunately. It was a surprise and a disappointment. It’s a fiveweek injury,” he said.
“Tyrese Sinclair rolled his ankle, so we’re not too sure how long he’s going to be out for just yet, that’s early stages, and Harvey Gilmour has a two-match ban for a tenth yellow card. That was a blow.
“D’mani and Harvey had brilliant games the other night (in the 3-0 win against Wealdstone) and were losses for the team, but we had players ready to come in to fight for the shirt and to put on a performance and try to help us win, and we didn’t manage to do so.”