Rejuvenation game

I DON’T BELIEVE IT: Athletic defender Brian Wilson is given his marching orders by referee Lee Collins (partially hidden) in the second half against Yeovil.

ATHLETIC caretaker manager Dean Holden wants to get his players refreshed as quickly as possible for the upcoming Barnsley game.

The 2-1 loss to Yeovil on Saturday saw the club slip to 15th place in Sky Bet League One. Brian Wilson’s red card and goals from Joel Grant and James Hayter saw the Glovers complete a second-half comeback in added time. It leaves Athletic’s record against the teams near the bottom of the table reading as a tale of major missed opportunities.

Against the sides currently in the bottom-four, the club has taken only two points out of a possible 21..

Holden felt there was little wrong with the effort from his men.

“You can only look at them individually,” said Holden, asked why his men get poor results against struggling sides. “The conditions were poor at Yeovil, but it was the same for both teams. We knew they would be up for a scrap, but I think the lads matched them for that. They gave it everything, as they did at Port Vale.

“They were just two poor goals. If it had kept it at 1-1 with 10 men, everyone would probably say it was a good point.”

“The key thing is that we recover properly and the effort that has gone into the past couple of games, including the travel, doesn’t get into the back end of the week. We don’t want to go to into Barnsley on a downward mentality. We want to make sure we respond quickly, as we did after Preston.”

Adam Lockwood previous knee injury wasn’t a factor in him being replaced after 75 minutes by Timothee Dieng: “His legs literally seized up. We tried to get another five minutes out of him, but he was struggling even to jog.”

Jacob Mellis will be missing for three weeks with a torn hamstring. He joins George Elokobi, Joseph Mills and Amari Morgan-Smith on the sidelines.

On the new manager front, Iain Dowie remains the bookmakers’ favourite (1-3) to land the job with Shefki Kuqi (7-2) in second spot and Holden (4-1) in third.