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McCarthy Bemoans Bad Marking and Town Seeming to "Unravel" - Ipswich Town News

Town boss Mick McCarthy was left bemoaning his side’s failure to mark from a corner and his team seeming to “unravel” as they were defeated 2-0 at Brentford.

McCarthy was pleased with his team’s performance before the break and didn’t see the result coming at half-time: "I didn’t see that being the scoreline at half-time, I don’t think anybody did, truth be known.

"We didn’t mark properly from a corner, did we? Gives them a goal, but what’s disappointing is that we seemed to unravel after that and looked like conceding another one, which is unlike us.

"And, of course, we did, and that made it really difficult for us because they can play and it’s harder then to chase it and get after it, especially two games in with the heat that’s around and probably the disappointment of conceding the goals that we did.”

After last week’s 4-2 victory over Barnsley McCarthy was frustrated that the Blues conceding from set pieces and he admits to concerns with both goals today having come from corners.

"Yes, of course,” he added. "I don’t like conceding goals from those things, they can be avoided. And we’ll try and make sure we do avoid it.”

He says it’s something they spend a lot of time working on in training: "Of course, we do look at it, it’s not like we just forget all about it.

"People have got jobs to do and if we do them correctly then goals don’t end up in the back of our net. But quite clearly we haven’t, have we?”

He added: "If they left me unmarked like that I’d score with it and all, and I’m 57. I’m not joking either.

"We mark man for man, people talk about zonal marking, but there’s no right way or wrong way in terms of zonal or man for man.

"The only right way is stopping your bleeding man form scoring, that’s the only right way. It’s however you do it and we didn’t do it, did we?

"I played there for a long time and I’m sure somebody scored against me at some stage, so it does happen. But that was far too simple.”

Why does he feel his side were so under par once they were behind? "Straight after the game it would be impossible for me to analyse and say anything about that.

"We’d had a really good first half, everybody knew that, I think everybody in the ground knew we’d played really well, it had been a good performance.

"Then to concede like we did, it shouldn’t knock the stuffing out of us, but it appeared to. It certainly gave them a lift as well, of course.”

Brentford boss Dean Smith felt the first goal was key: "We gave the ball away cheaply in the first half but we had some good passages of play just before the break and then the goal gave us a lot of confidence.

"After that we showed glimpses of what we can do. There’s a still a lot to work on, but we were very good today in terms of competing for second balls, we had to do that side of the game and did that well.”

He added: "Getting that first win is big. We’ve got players who have never played in the Championship before and probably felt a bit apprehensive.

"We didn’t play well last weekend and got beaten, but I’ve said to the players I believe they are a really good Championship team but they have to believe in themselves.”

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