Penney calls for fighting spirit

ATHLETIC manager Dave Penney urged his side to up their collective game for the visit of Coca-Cola League One leaders Norwich City to Boundary Park this weekend.

A poor showing at Elland Road last night saw Athletic succumb to a 2-0 loss and with Hartlepool and Brighton both winning, the team has dropped back into the relegation zone.

Penney confessed his deep disappointment that the encouraging show in defeat at Colchester was not built on and admitted that the individual performances of centre-back pair Reuben Hazell and captain Sean Gregan were the only highlights on a night to forget.

“I think we were well beaten and didn’t really turn up,” said a disappointed Penney, whose side lost to two second-half goals from Luciano Becchio.

“We did enough defensively but not enough going forward and that is the reason we lost. We contained and frustrated them in the first half. But we didn’t do enough when we had the ball.

“The plan was that we came here to keep it tight. We did that for 45 minutes but once we concede the first goal, we had to come out a little bit more than we had been doing and they got another quite quickly.

“We had a tough game on Saturday but what was disappointing was the performance here. I can live with the 1-0 defeat at Colchester, the way we played there. But we didn’t perform here and we deserved to get beaten.

“The two centre-halves were solid and kept us organised but there wasn’t much after that.

“Now we want to get this out of our system and with the top of the league coming there is no better game for that.

As time ticked away Penney brought on Tom Eaves for only his second senior appearance in place of top scorer Pawel Abbott with 10 minutes left and Kelvin Lomax also got a late run at full-back.

“We were getting no joy,” said Penney, explaining his changes. “There were six or seven that didn’t really perform so we freshened it up.

“We got fresh legs on and tried to get Kelvin (Lomax) back on from his injury, get Joe (Colbeck) on and give Tom a go as he has deserved it.”