Tranmere Rovers manager Micky Mellon says his side to need to manage the game better, following the defeat on penalties to Oldham Athletic in the Carabao Cup.
Rovers went 2-0 up through Sam Foley and Elliott Nevitt, but the hosts fought back to equalise and went onto win on penalties.
He said: “The main disappointment is when you go 2-0 up, you’ve got to manage the game better than that. To lose two goals from set-pieces is obviously very disappointing. We went 2-0 up, and played a lot of good football. We created a lot of chances, it was a really open game for both teams.
“A draw, in the end, was possibly the right result. Both sides could’ve taken opportunities to seal the game. We’re obviously disappointed, and the main thing that we’ll talk about is the game management. To go 2-0 up away from home, we need to do better than that.”
The manager spoke about needing to do better in defensive situations, but was pleased with how his side reacted to conceding.
“The first goal, we’ve got to do better. You’ve got to make sure you’re switched on. If you want to get better results in the cup, you’ve got to do better in those moments. The second one, it was a decent delivery in. We’ll have to look where our starting positions were. We’ve allowed them to get back into the game.
“But we kept coming, and we took big chunks of control in the game. We had an opportunity at the end with Paul [Glatzel], but couldn’t quite get past the goalkeeper. But on the whole, a draw was probably the fair result, and to lose on penalties is always a bit of a low.”
Mellon did praise the player’s flexibility in changing systems during the game, with a tactical tweak giving Rovers control during large parts of the game.
“We have a flexible group, and I have trust in my players. When we have to change things, we will. So that’s all credit to the players, we’ve seen that we needed to do that, and the players fitted in seamlessly into that. That gave us a lot of control of the game.”