Conceded goals poor in Oxford draw
JIMMY Mcnulty admitted he was disappointed to only take a point on Saturday.
Kairo Mitchell had fired Dale into an 11th minute lead against National League strugglers Oxford City.
However, the visitors netted twice in the space of seven minutes before the break through Harvey Greenslade and Josh Parker.
After the interval, Dale lifted their game and deservedly drew level via Sam Mather in the 77th minute.
Dale head coach Mcnulty was unhappy with the goals conceded but did praise the players’ competitiveness to come back and earn a point.
“We’re disappointed overall if I’m being honest, with the goals we conceded,” said Mcnulty.
“From our point of view, they were normal, processed-based stuff that we work on and we expect diligence of ourselves in those moments to know exactly what we’re doing.
“For a couple of moments, we weren’t doing a couple of components that we should be doing, which causes trouble further down the line.
“Those ones are really annoying because in a game where you go ahead and you’re having chances, you feel like the second ones coming, those ones feel like gifts, and we don’t want to give gifts to opponents.
“We had to battle against the flow of how the day started to go and I think the one shining light is the competitiveness that remained from us to not run away from that battle when it was looking and sounding tough.
“We fought to try and produce moments we practice get back to ourselves, in a game that became a struggle and I think, second half, there came a moment with about half an hour to go where we wrestled control of the game again and it looked like it was coming.
“Fortunately, we got a second goal, had chances to get a third and ultimately we came away disappointed with a point.”