Curle blasts 'embarrassing' and 'naive' Cobblers after Yeovil draw

Cobblers boss Keith Curle slammed his side's 'embarrassing' first-half performance and 'naive defending' after their 2-2 draw with relegated Yeovil Town on Saturday.
Keith CurleKeith Curle
Keith Curle

The Glovers arrived at the PTS without an away win since October but they stormed into a 2-0 lead as Tristan Abrahams, who converted from the spot, and Jake Gray took advantage of some poor home defending.

Town improved in the second-half and a comical own goal gave them a lifeline before Daniel Powell scored his third goal in five games to at least salvage a draw for the Cobblers, enough to relegate rock-bottom Yeovil to non-league, replaced by Justin Edinburgh's Leyton Orient.

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"The first-half was embarrassing," said Curle. "The second-half was something like where we need to be but I wouldn't say I was proud of them fighting back because it's a minimum requirement to run around."

On Yeovil's goals, he added: "If you grab somebody around the waist with both arms and they go to ground, the referee can interpret that as you dragging them to the ground.

"We'd appeal for it in the other box so it's naive defending and there's no need to defend in that matter. It means you're trying to take a shortcut and you're not focused on your job - where the ball is and where you man is.

"You can't grab someone around the waist and drag them to the ground or give someone the opportunity to go to ground but that's a learning curve.

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"The second goal was from a throw-in and it was embarrassing. The player just walked through and put the ball in the net from a throw-in.

"It wasn't even clever play or movement, it was basic defending and it's what you get when defenders are more interested in doing someone else's job than doing their own.

"Identify danger, spot danger, stay with runners and have that intensity in your play that they will not score but today we lacked that in the first-half - there wasn't a desire to make sure we got on the front foot and we caused them problems.

"There was in the second-half and we got reward with the two goals but we can't go and give teams a two-goal headstart."