Gavin Cowan remains upbeat despite Telford points lost
AFC Telford United manager Gavin Cowan was keen to accentuate the positive as his side maintained their unbeaten start to the season, but acknowledged they really should have taken maximum reward from their long trip to Blyth Spartans.
Cowan’s men came within a whisker of making it two wins from two, but had to settle for a 1-1 draw in the North East on Saturday after Courtney Meppen-Walter’s inexplicable error handed the hosts a late equaliser.
“It’s definitely points lost, and we only have ourselves to blame, but ultimately you have to put it into perspective,” said Cowan. “We’re two games in, and every point will count at the end of the season. It was a dominant performance for large parts of the game; we’ve had numerous chances and then there’s a catastrophic error at the end.”
The Bucks led through a 13th-minute Jason Oswell header, and the striker and various team-mates all had opportunities to extend the lead, particularly in the first half, but Cowan felt his side allowed complacency to creep in.
“I said to the players at the end of the game, ‘there are no easy games’. There’s a reason that these old sayings exist. But there are different challenges,” he added. “I just wanted the players to understand that in games like this, where you get a bit more time on the ball, you can become complacent, and not be as ruthless as I wanted them to be.”
“The tempo needed to be quicker, we needed to move the ball quicker. The things we were doing that made us successful are what we stopped doing in the second half, so I was a bit miffed as to why we did that, but we were still in control.”
