We were second best to everything – Liam

• Southport Visiter
• 18 Aug 2022
• BY TERRY OWEN

SOUTHPORT boss Liam Watson was in no mood to hide behind excuses following Saturday’s 3-0 home defeat to Peterborough Sports.

The hosts were never really in the game after Dion SembieFerris had given the visitors the lead after 50 seconds.

In sweltering conditions, the same player extended Peterborough’s lead in the 20th minute.

Sembie-Ferris was denied a hat-trick after the break when Cam Mason kept out his spotkick but Jordan Nicholson netted the third shortly after.

Watson said: “I can talk about excuses but we got beat by a better team.

“Sometimes you can play in a windy game and you’ve got the wind in the first half and you concede in an uphill battle.

“But the conditions today were baking hot and whoever got the first goal was always going to…but it was a great goal from Peterborough’s point of view.

“The second goal was the end of the game for me.

“We’ve lost the ball in the attacking third.

“The kid who scored was back defending, we’ve got two left sided players behind him, the ball breaks down, they break, he gets to the far post.

“Charlie has got to stop the cross but he hasn’t.

“Dylan and Jack Doyle with recovery runs, they just weren’t there.

“They’ve put it to the far post, that was someone with just a bit more desire and from there on it just went downhill but I don’t want to take anything away from Peterborough.

“Their screening in front of the forwards was great, the workrate and the three in the middle of the pitch were miles better than ours.

“But I didn’t get carried away last week (a 5-3 win at Boston) so I’m not going to get carried away this week”.

Watson said he asked questions of his players in the changing room and on the back of it, he expects a reaction.

He continued: “I’ve said what I’ve said in the changing rooms about body language, do you give up, do you look to get off the pitch?

“Do you start looking for niggly little fouls or do you be a bit braver and try to play?

“Sometimes in football that’s how it happens, you don’t get the rub of the green.

“We didn’t deserve the rub of the green, they wanted it more than us.

“So fair play to their manager, he’s set up, was attacking and I thought our two centre halves really struggled, they didn’t want to get up the pitch and they wanted to turn it into a battle.

“They should be getting up the pitch because they’re both athletic and they can run to leave space in behind.

“But they wanted to stay and wrestle with someone who was a lot stronger and with a lot more knowhow than them two.

“It could have been worse, Cam’s saved a pen but I felt sorry for the forwards feeding off scraps”.

With the defeat being only the second game of the season, Watson insisted he’ll be keeping a level head.

But he also suggested some of the players should be questioning their performance in what was a bitterly disappointing defeat following such a bright opening weekend.

Watson added: “I don’t want to get carried away. I need to have a sit down and take stock but you do find out a lot more about people when they get beat compared to when they win.

“There’s no such thing in football as a home banker.

“Sometimes it is easier to play away from home, especially in modern football with players breaking quickly.

“But we lacked serious quality today.

There were too many longer balls when anyone who saw us last Saturday would have seen that wasn’t the case when it was diagonal balls into good areas but that wasn’t the case today.

“We gave ourselves a mountain from the start, conceding after 50 seconds and from there on it went downhill.

“I think one of two of them need to have a serious look at themselves, I know I will be”.