Bromley manager, Karl Robinson feels that his team must keep “moving forward” after their FA Cup exit.
Goals from Sonny Aljofree and Tom Bradshaw saw Rotherham knock Bromley out of the cup in Robinson’s first match in charge, which has left the Ravens free to focus fully on their league campaign for the remainder of this season.
Speaking to BFC TV post match, Robinson felt that his team had solid spells but rued basic mistakes for the two conceded goals.
“Well I took from it, I thought territorially I thought ‘How are we rotating, how are we play it?’ It’s funny, isn’t it, when you evolve and try and change things. And in the first 30 minutes I thought we were very good.
“I thought that when we didn’t take our chances when they came along. And then what happened is in the transition of style, and when obviously how you’re open at the back and how you defend wide crosses is something that has to improve.
“And then through human error for the first goal, we go 1-0 down, right against the run of play. And then from then on, I thought we started the second half ok, but then all of a sudden the left-back goes for challenges he shouldn’t and gets injured and goes down and they break and score a goal and you’re obviously 2-0 down.”
Robinson proceeded to praise his players for not giving up in attempting to do the correct basics despite being 2-0 down early in the second half, but admitted that patience over the next fortnight is key in order to develop a style that can trouble opponents.
“And then what I’m really impressed with is how they didn’t stop trying to do the right things. And I think for me moving forward, we have to keep coaching, we have to keep developing. And we have to make sure that we become a team that has a clear identity and not find ourselves in the middle of it.”
“Let put our cards on the table. It’s been losing for a while. So it’s not something that we wanted to change very very quickly. And we’ve got to find ourselves over the next weeks now, developing something that makes us really hard to play against, but really exciting to watch. And if we do that, we’ll be alright.
“I’m really proud of how they’ve been for 48 hours. Every single one of them has given me an awful lot, I’m not going to let a result dampen that. I’ve been around a long time and I know what I’m looking for, and I know what we need to improve.”
Robinson also noted the graft that the squad put in since his arrival on Thursday (5 November) as he explained that improvement is key, but admitted that fitness is an issue as evidenced by Jacob Mendy suffering an injury in the second half.
“When new manager comes in, you can sort of miss the first game if you want to and sort of give yourself a full run and jump into the next game. We want to change things. We want to make sure that we’re better in certain areas. If you look at the game today, obviously we have got three of our centre-backs out injured.
“You’re bringing in Mendy – he’s not played much football either and he has to come off with an injury. Our left centre-back comes off with an injury. We knew he wasn’t quite right going out for the second half, but he wanted to give it a good go. So there was little components of our game that we know can be better, and we can be fitter.
“I’ve just asked them in there. I’m searching for elitism and professionalism, and making sure the intent of the detail is 100%.”
Victor Adeboyejo suffered an injury during warm-up and Robinson has ruled out his injury as an excuse for the defeat as he laid the blame at the two players whose errors led to Aljofree and Bradshaw’s goals.
“Yeah but I don’t want to come and say ‘Oh we lost a player in the warm-up and use that as an excuse.’ We got beat today because we made two big human errors, and then it becomes chasing something. So I don’t want to blame anybody or blame them moments.”
Michael Cheek replaced Adeboyejo and Robinson casually humoured that the team had worsened before iterating that Cheek brought extra quality, and explained that the team need to learn to turn negatives into positives.
“We dealt with it, but we’ve got Cheek who is one of the best strikers at what he’s done for this football club for many, many years that everybody says should be playing week in week out. So another case of it, I thought we got worse.
“In fact if anything, we had another player of real high quality starting. And that’s our responsibility now, is to make sure that we keep improving so that when you have things that are negative, that you’re reacting in a positive way.
“That’s injuries, suspensions, results, wherever it may be, you have to respond positively.”
For some clubs, a cup competition brings less pressure but Robinson felt that pressure helped his team in the opening half hour of the match until the mistakes crept in.
“No, far from the result because you never want to lose. I hate losing. But I’m not naive enough of people that are all rather than where they’re in the league. Rather, I’ve got some really good players.
“And you always know that just with the pressure of the league campaign off them, we thought the pressure of the league campaign would have been good for us.
“And I felt that for that 25 minutes, we were by far the better team and our territorial opportunities created as well, that we didn’t take them or work hard enough to turn them into goals. And then one silly human error and letting a silly cross in then almost undoes all of the good work.
“I think if you get in it 0-0 and obviously it was in first-half injury time wasn’t it? So if we get in it 0-0, all of a sudden you start saying to a lot of the lads a great first half, coming out to be better in the second. And that wasn’t to be. Well that’s just a bit unfortunate.”
Bromley have a passionately vocal fan base and Robinson addressed that opinions won’t be enough to turn results around, as he iterated that the basic play needs to be better.
“That’s the only thing you can do. And people always have an opinion, boy. The football is never going to move on with our positivity. It’s that simple. Regardless of the opinions or whatever. And I’ve said that to the players that we have to do the right things. We do.
“And if we don’t, we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult moment. What can we count? But that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to be challenged and we’re here to be better..
Bromley now face Robinson’s former club, MK Dons at home on Tuesday 10 November in a Jersey Mike’s Trophy’s dead rubber group match, with the Ravens already out of that competition but Robinson is using that and a behind-closed-doors game on Friday to assess his squad further,
“It’s a good game, but it’s about anywhere, a competition. So once again, like I’m saying to you, today is just what’s happened. We’re already out of a cup with a game to play which is not great either. So from that point of view, we’ll use it for fitness.
“We will use it for the scene or the components of our team. And we’ll use it to be better. I’ve said to them in a weird way, not saying it’s pre-season, but I love that this game, the Tuesday game, and we have a game on Friday as well of almost like three games in a week for me to see what we have within the squad.
“And I’ve done that today. I’ll do it again on Tuesday and I’ll do it behind closed doors on Friday. And then we’ll get ourselves ready to go for Reading away two weeks today.”
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