BREWERS manager Martin Paterson said that his side need to do better in converting the chances that they are currently having in games following defeat on the road away at Exeter City this afternoon.
Albion suffered defeat on the road for the second time in a week as ten-man Exeter City survived second half pressure to cling on to victory courtesy of Reece Cole’s first half strike.
“It’s one of the softest goals I've ever seen conceded in football – that can't happen in professional football, it's a simple give and go. The wing-back has got done on the inside, then a cut back to the area and people aren’t tracking their runners. All of a sudden you are one down - it's also quite clear what goes wrong when you don’t score goals.
“I'll have to watch the game back. I don't know the statistics, I don't know how many opportunities we had inside the six yard box to put the ball in the back of the net. I want to be careful that I'm not hanging anybody out personally to dry, but it'll be me that has to take it on the chin - I've got no problem with that. But the issue is we don't take opportunities to score goals.
“We've got to find a way. There is a case of, in my opinion, probably five, six arguably clear cut opportunities at goal and we've not converted one. It's unacceptable from myself and from the team. We've got to keep going. We're going to keep working, keep trying to improve. At some point someone's got to step up and go right, I’m going to hit one in the back of the net.
"Tactically, you can go through things and you can be can joust and discuss, could we have done this better? Yeah, there's always things that we can do better but ultimately you have five, maybe six, clear cut goalscoring opportunities at Exeter and don’t score, so it's hard to be positive. I think it's unacceptable to play against 10 men for 50 minutes, to have those chances and not come away with anything.
“The table still lies as the table does, there's still opportunities to go and get 25 points and it's going to be for us to clear it all up. We need to make sure that people keep getting in those goalscoring areas and trust the process.
Paterson says that Albion now have a huge must win fixture next weekend as Port Vale visit the Pirelli Stadium for a Staffordshire derby.
“Next Saturday is a must win game, so there's no point trying to hide that. There's no point trying to dress it up as anything. We need to win games and I need to win games for the football club. It's again another really tough day. I'm not looking for excuses, it’s unacceptable. I'm not even going to try and pull wool over people's eyes with positives. Probably there are some in terms of chances created, but it means nothing when you don't convert and we must do that next weekend!"
