Cook’s anger at Accrington Stanley's Plain awful display
11:00am Monday 15th October 2012 in Sport
ANGRY Accrington Stanley boss Paul Cook says he was let down by his players in Saturday’s 3-1 defeat at Torquay United.
The Reds slipped to 11th place in League Two after the weekend loss at Plainmoor followed Rochdale’s victory at the Crown Ground seven days earlier, as well as the postponement of Stanley’s fixture against Rotherham.
And Cook was upset with the manner of his team’s performance at Plainmoor.
“To say we’re not happy is a slight understatement,” said the Reds boss.
“We never turned up, we never played well, we never got going.
“We let our supporters down, we let myself down, we let the coaching staff down and you can’t do it.
“We were awful. We never showed any hunger or desire to win a football game and when you play like that you get what you deserve.
“We could have been beaten five or six. Ian Dunbavin has had to make two or three tremendous saves in the second half to make the score respectable.”
Cook warned his players that he will not tolerate a repeat, urging them to take responsibility for their performance.
“You’re going to get those inconsistencies and that’s some-thing you’ve got to deal with,” he said.
“But if you accept it and put up with it, players will think it can happen again and unfortunately it won’t here.
“We’ve had a bad week, we’ve had a game called off and we’ve lost two games and it’s important we pick the players up in the right way. But players have to be acc-ountable in football.
“Managers will always get the blame – wrong team selections and different stuff.
“But you must show a desire to win a football game. If you do not show it, you will not win.
“You get beat and people say, ‘Oh we were unlucky and the ref cost us.’ But it’s the biggest load of rubbish I’ve heard in my life.
“Torquay were far superior to us. We never looked good in possession, we never moved the ball, albeit the pitch was difficult.
“But we’ve had a bad pitch to play on so let’s get rolled over and go back with nothing?”
Cook, though, stopped short of pointing the finger at individual members of the team, preferring not to dissect what went wrong for Torquay’s three goals.
Stanley had levelled the match at 1-1 before Torquay scored twice in the final 20 minutes at Plainmoor.
“I’m not going to discuss the goals,” he said. “I think that would be unfair on the players.
“We’ve said we’re not happy with them, we can’t hit them with a big stick. We love the players at our club, the players are the ones who get us the success, we’re not going to air our washing in public.
“We score a goal, it’s 1-1 away at Torquay and we concede a goal 60 seconds later so you can work it out for yourself.”
