Tranmere Rovers manager Micky Mellon was disappointed with his sides defending after Rovers fell to a 3-2 away defeat against Crewe Alexandra in League Two.
Talisman James Norwood equalised for Rovers in the first half after Callum Ainley opened the scoring. Another strike from Ainley and goal from Charlie Kirk provided a cushion for the hosts. Substitute Paul Mullin headed home for TRFC to set up a grandstand finale, but Crewe held out for all three points at The Alexandra Stadium.
Speaking to the media after the game, Mellon said: “We have to speak with common sense; we shouldn’t have to try and score three goals to get a draw and four goals to win the game, it makes it very difficult. There are bits in all the goals we’ll go through next week, but I think the bottom line is you can’t give three goals away home or away and expect to pick up many points.
“They kept battling and getting back in it. If you would have said to me before the game we would score two ourselves I’d have said we’d have every chance of getting something out of that, so the bottom line is you can’t give them type of goals away.
The Scot believes it is a combination of team and individual mistakes which is costing Rovers goals at the minute.
Mellon added: “Bit of both. I think at the end of the day you can’t give goals away like we are giving away at the moment, that’s the problem. You’ve got to be resilient and see things through, we just made some poor decisions at times and allowed ourselves to be exposed and obviously the third goal nobody picking up and somebody free at the back post is obviously a real hammer blow.
"We won’t be wanting for spirit, fight and desire but the other qualities you’ve got to have are you’ve got to be good defensively as a group and not give away cheap goals.”
Mellon felt after Norwood’s leveller the game was in the balance and at that stage it was a difficult game to call what the end result would be.
“I don’t think at that stage anybody could really say who was going to get the result, I though it was toing and froing. We knew what they were trying to do and we knew what we were trying to do to try and stop it.
“But like I say the goals have changed the game and you can’t expect to score three or four goals to try and win a game of football.”
Next up for Rovers is the FA Cup replay against Oxford United and Mellon is eager to pick players at the top of their game, as well as improving the organisation of the team.
“We’ll see, we’ll look at it like we did today and pick the lads who are in form and the lads who we believe are going to do jobs for us and that give us a chance of winning.
“We’ll comb over this and try and find a way of making us better that’s for sure, that’s all you can do as coaching staff and then we’ll work forward as quick as we can on the organisation of what were going to do for Tuesday night.”
By Joe Sargent