Head coach Garry Monk has insisted that his Cambridge United players will not lose any confidence from Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Blackpool.
The U’s made the long trip to Bloomfield Road buoyed by back-to-back wins against Barnsley and Wigan Athletic – results that put a six-point gap between themselves and the Sky Bet League One zone.
And while United were unable to make it three victories in a row in the north west, Monk felt that the standard of performance – particularly in the second half – will have kept the squad in upbeat mood ahead of the visit of Charlton Athletic on Saturday (13 April) and the trip to Bristol Rovers on Tuesday (16 April).
Monk said: “The main thing is across the three games, you can see we’re moving in the right direction in terms of performance.
“We’d already gathered points and of course we’re annoyed and disappointed we haven’t got the right result today, but overall there is a lot of positives and confidence we can take from these three performances.
“You can see the team is clearly moving in the right direction and we know that if we can perform like this we’re going to be in positions to take points and get what we need.
“We don’t lose any confidence, whereas you look at Reading (4-0 defeat) and Lincoln (6-0 defeat), those type of performances you can lose confidence from. We needed to rectify that.
“These last three games I’ve been really pleased with the players. The level of performance was still good (against Blackpool), even in that first half it was still there in terms of our defensive responsibility, but second half we showed what I wanted us to show – that little bit of composure and quality on the ball.
“It just shows you we can compete with any team in this league if our performance levels are where they need to be.”
The hosting Tangerines scored what turned out to be the winning goal in the 30th minute.
A breakdown in communication between United’s James Brophy and James Gibbons allowed Blackpool to keep an attack alive and the ball was eventually worked to midfielder Sonny Carey, who calmly stroked the ball home from 20 yards.
Monk’s men offered very little in the way of a response before the break, yet after the restart they went close on two occasions to scoring an equalising goal.
First the in-form Gassan Ahadme saw his header kept out by a flying save from Blackpool goalkeeper Dan Grimshaw and then five minutes from time substitute Elias Kachunga turned his close-range effort against the post.
Monk added: “I was really proud of the second-half performance and we were a lick of paint away from getting our just rewards.
“I thought it was a really good response to being a goal behind and like I said, we’re really unfortunate not to come away with something.”
