AFC Fylde manager hopes players rediscover high standards

The Coasters went down 2-1 at Spennymoor Town, having led through Joe Rowley’s goal before Glen Taylor’s double gave the hosts victory.

Results elsewhere mean Fylde are two points ahead of King’s Lynn Town – and with a game in hand – as they prepare to host Kidderminster Harriers this afternoon.

Murray said: “We didn’t hit our standards, we took too long to get going.

“When we did get going, we created a few chances – but not enough chances – and then, the last 15 minutes, we made our subs to win the game.

“Birdy (Pierce Bird) ends up getting injured, so he can’t move, so we have to stick him up front. We were playing with 10 men and they scored.

“We made the gamble to win the game, scored the goal, and then it backfired on us at the end. Overall, I just didn’t think we were at our normal standards.

“It doesn’t matter who you are. In any league, if you don’t hit your performance levels, you get punished.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game but, at this point of the season, every game’s a tough game.

“You’ve got to deal with so many different things, you’ve got to deal with other people fighting for things, emotions, pressure, but we’re in a privileged position.

“We’re a long way from finishing this off, there’s a lot of points to play for, it was never going to be easy; no-one was ever going to hand it to us.

“We will react, we stay focused, we stay on course and we keep doing what we did before today, which was show a real passion and desire to win football matches.

“For me, that has to be the given from now to the end of the season.

“As a team, when you come away to a place like this and you go 1-0 up, you have to see the game out.

“I understand we’re playing with 10 men for the last part of the game but we’re good enough to deal with that.

“Everything’s still in our hands. When we win games, we don’t lose our temperament, we take emotion out of it and it’s still tunnel vision for us.

“We have to react again. One thing this team has always done is react.

“We will recover now, we will focus on the next game, we didn’t need to say a lot after the game – the boys knew they weren’t good enough today and that’s the bottom line.

“It’s not going to be easy, you’ve got other teams that want to do what we want to do.

“I’ve said it from day one, this will go to the wire and I haven’t changed my thought process on that.

“We have to keep doing things professionally as a football club, we have to prepare right, we have to make sure there’s no excuses. If we try cutting corners and taking shortcuts, we’ll get found out.

“It’s a very tough league and we need to make sure we keep our professionalism and our standards high.”