AFC Women manager Scott Booth shared his thoughts after Aberdeen Women lost 4-3 at home to Motherwell on Sunday.
“I’ve spoken a lot this season about how errors have cost us in games. And again today, we’re at nil-nil, both teams still finding their way into the game, but with very little to worry about. And then just basically give them a goal. And you know you’ve not even really started the game. However, you’re already one-nil down.
“I’ve felt like far too often this season we are in this situation. It’s like how do we find ourselves here? And then we dig away and get a goal back and just start to try and set yourself into the game and then make another mistake.
“Everyone can make a mistake. It’s not the sort of singular thing about individual errors. But to make numerous mistakes, countless mistakes throughout the season in positions where a simple decision made, a simple bit of the detail, whether on a clearance, on a pass, on a decision that’s being made for us, it’s really, really costing us far too much.
“And I think if you look at scoring three goals at home and you still lose the game, there’s definitely something wrong there.
“If you’re going to defend that badly in situations like we did today, you’re going to find yourself constantly in a battle.
“And I just feel like today I was disappointed in the energy that the players brought, particularly in the first half, to the game. We’ve worked for two weeks now on playing a certain way against Motherwell. And you know there’s been a lot of good work done on the training pitch. But it’s really disappointing when you want to see that work that you’ve been doing, and you want to see it being brought onto the pitch for the most important part of the week, which is the game. And sadly that was lacking today.
“We have to react next Sunday. We need turn up on Sunday, one individual to the next, and put in a team performance that means that everyone is putting into practice everything that we work on.
“I think today there was very little of what we worked on put into practice on the pitch. I don’t know if that’s an aspect of the players struggling to deal with the pressure that comes in the position we’re in in the table, so there’s maybe a bit of that that’s involved. But certainly in terms of the individual errors I think we’ve seen our fair share this whole season.
“We’ve certainly done a lot of work with the players in terms of the situation that we’re in. But it’s more than that. For me it’s about when you pull on that red jersey and you’re playing for Aberdeen, each player has a responsibility to deliver their 100% best.
“I think that’s the least that players should be doing at this point in time. And I think sometimes when you’re where we are, the little tactical details are not as important as actually rolling your sleeves up and going and playing for the club and for your team. I think we need a lot more of that.”
