Flemming Pedersen felt his side abandoned their gameplan during Monday’s 3-0 U21 Professional Development League Two South defeat at Jersey Road against Millwall. Jamie Philpot scored either side of half-time to put The Lions in control and Kris Twardek added a third on the hour to secure the points for Justin Skinner’s Play-Off chasing side. Speaking to Bees Player after the match Flemming felt his side didn’t stick to the plan and tried to do too much individually to get back into the game after going behind.
“Today we have to learn that, even though they scored early in the second-half, we can’t get frustrated,” said Flemming. “Some of our players started to play more individually and if we do that then it is very difficult to win games. As I said to the team, we have to stick to the plan and try to be calm. We need to focus on what we do in training and what we want to do in the game. We have a clear plan about how we want to win the games and we lost ourselves in the match. That cost us the 3-0 goal before we found ourselves in the last 25 minutes.”
Even before they went behind on the half-hour to Philpot’s header from a deep Kyron Farrell free-kick The Bees had been struggling to create much against a Millwall side that was unbeaten in the league since October. The closest The Bees came to a goal was an early Alan McCormack drive and an Andy Gogia shot that was easy for Harry Girling. Flemming felt the way that The Bees played didn’t give them much chance of winning as they struggled to attack as a unit.
“I have experienced better games,” said Flemming. “We struggled a lot with our positioning and our collective movement. When we received the ball that is when we started to move and we always have to move together when the ball is on the way. We didn’t have the right balance in the team today and that showed in the game. We can build on everything from today, even the bad things. Overall our collective moves have to be better otherwise we don’t have a chance with the way that we want to play.”
Aside from the first-team trio of McCormack, Gogia and Scott Hogan it was another young Under-21 put out with three Youth-Team players starting the match and another two joining them from the bench. Flemming admitted that with such a young side there was always going to be inconsistency but he said that can never be used as an excuse for poor displays.
“There will always be inconsistency with younger players,” said Flemming. “As coaches when we talk to the players about this they have to be calm because this is part of the game. Even though we are younger it must never be an excuse because they want to win every time. We must not use age as an excuse.”
Bees Player subscribers can watch the interview with Flemming below