Town manager Roy Keane says his players need to improve the quality of their final ball after again failing to make their supremacy tell during the latter stages at Watford last night, having done much the same during the home defeat to Coventry on Saturday. The Blues boss also feels his side, who have scored only once in the first half in the league this season, need to be more consistent throughout matches.
Keane said: "I think our final ball could have been a touch better, but that’s the hardest part of football. We’re just not doing it well enough.
"As much as I was pleased with the players in the second half on Saturday and more so with the second half at Watford, we need to be more consistent over the 90 minutes, although very few teams play really well for 90 minutes at any level.
"I think even when we got in good positions the final ball [let us down], one or two players were taking that extra touch. That’s why it’s the hardest part of football - trying to pick the final pass, putting the right weight on it, decision-making.
"Connor got in a few positions, Jason was in good positions in the box, young Murray was in good positions, but there was that extra bit of quality that we lacked, although that will come. That will come with experience for the players, as long as they learn from it.”
Keane changed to a 4-4-1-1 formation after weekend criticism of his use of a lone central striker but the Blues boss insists that the number of frontmen is only part of the story: "As I keep saying it’s not necessarily about having the right strikers on the pitch or the amount of strikers, it’s a matter of when you get these chances taking them. Tamás had half a chance, Jason did but it’s up to other players to contribute as well.
"We had to change it a little bit because of one or two injuries and because we wanted to freshen things up.
"In the second half I thought young Murray and Connor gave us a bit extra and Carlos coming on towards the end.
"But ultimately we’ve lost the game 2-1. You can talk about systems and tactics until the cows come home, you’ve still got to defend a touch better and when you get an opportunity put the ball in the back of the net.
"Because we’ve not been scoring many goals, conceding two was always going to make it hard for us. Watford came at us strongly after the break but we felt that if we got the goal back we’d get back into it, but we’re struggling to score goals.
"Against Coventry we had 21 shots and only one goal, we probably had a fair few tonight. I’m not sure about the offside goal, but I think we’re going through that little sticky patch and we’ve got to keep working and it certainly isn’t going to get any easier. That is the nature of the Championship.”
Keane confirmed that keeper Márton Fülöp missed out due to an injury but says that he hopes the Hungarian will be back for the weekend trip to Nottingham Forest: "Márton hurt his back yesterday morning. He’s been feeling it since last Friday, since he came back from the internationals.
"He played the game on Saturday and then we had a light session on Monday, but it was too stiff. Márton’s missed out and we’re hoping that he’ll be OK after three or four days’ rest. We’re lucky to have good goalkeepers backing him up with Murph and Arran.”