Nolan 'knew it wasn't going to be easy' but new Cobblers boss remains positive after defeat at Reading
New Cobblers boss Kevin Nolan remained positive and upbeat after admitting he wasn’t overly surprised by the manner of his side’s 4-1 defeat at Reading on Boxing Day.
Town’s first game under Nolan started in the worst possible way as poor marking from a set-piece allowed Harvey Knibbs to score a fifth-minute opener, and then further static defending led to Sam Smith adding a second inside half-an-hour.
Reading were comfortable from then on and two further goals in the second half secured a dominant victory, with Tom Eaves at least managing a late consolation.
"I’m obviously disappointed but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Nolan. “It’s been a whirlwind 72 hours but I didn’t expect it to be plain-sailing and I knew there was a lot that we needed to work on.
"We tried to put a little bit of info into the boys in the last 24, 48 hours and I did see a bit of an improvement but I wasn’t too happy with the goals we conceded and the manner of them. I spoke to them after the game about that because we simply have to be better out of possession.
"I thought they sometimes looked a bit hungrier on some second balls and I felt we were a bit like a rabbit in headlines when we were on the ball. We needed to be calmer when we turned the ball over but we handed it straight back to them.
"We made some really strange decisions and when we got into good positions we didn’t hurt them like we should have. But as I said, having spoken to the chairman and to James (Whiting), we all know where we are and we’ll keep getting better.”