'Angry' Nolan expects big response from Cobblers against Doncaster Rovers
Kevin Nolan is expecting a big response from his players this weekend after admitting he was left ‘angry’ by defeat to Rotherham last time out.
Town were out-of-sorts in losing 2-1 at home to the Millers and Nolan acknowledged his side were well below par, but after a week of hard work on the training pitch, he’s anticipating a much improved performance in South Yorkshire tomorrow.
"I wasn’t happy with last weekend,” said Nolan. “The first half was fine but Rotherham were much better in the second and they had too many shots for my liking, although only two were on target so that shows the fine margins. But we made bad decisions and they landed on first balls and second balls and put us under pressure.
"We have worked on the things that I thought we got wrong and ironed them out in training and we'll highlight analytically to the lads those moments and those mistakes and how we can turn things back in our favour.
"We'll show them and give them belief that if you do it right, you'll get good outcomes for it, but there's no need to press the emergency button. I don't get carried away when we're winning games and I don't get carried away when we're losing games because I know the relentlessness of the EFL. I played in the Championship and I know what it's like to grind it out day in, day out and week in, week out and there are moments when you need to be calm.
"You can be angry and that's what I've said to the lads – I was angry after Saturday because I felt we let ourselves down – but when we come back for training, it's all about smiling and getting back on the pitch. There's things we need to work on and we've done that and there's a lot we can take into Doncaster at the weekend. I'm looking forward to what's hopefully a better day on Saturday.”