Mark Robson suggested that there were some positives to take in defeat, after West Ham United U21s fell to a 3-1 loss against Blackburn Rovers.
The young Hammers fell to just their third Premier League 2 defeat since October at Rush Green Stadium on Saturday after the visitors took a two-goal lead in the first half.
Georgie Gent opened the scoring after 35 minutes and Keenan Appiah-Forson’s own goal doubled Blackburn’s lead before the interval.
Divin Mubama hit back for the Irons with ten minutes remaining, but Sam Burns’ late strike secured all three points for the Rovers.
Whilst Robson could not fault the effort of his players, the lead coach suggested that first half mistakes proved to be costly.
It was a disappointing first half.
Kaelan [Casey] and Keenan have been superb for us all season and unfortunately they both made errors today. It’s part of football, everyone makes mistakes and I told them at half-time to put it behind them.
It’s not something that happens regularly, it was the first time that either of them have put a foot wrong all season. We had our backs to the wall a little bit at 2-0 and we tried to respond in the second half but it’s not easy when you’re two goals behind.
We gave it everything in the second half.
Credit to the boys because we kept on going and we had a right go in the second half. The ball was in their half for the majority of the half, but we were just lacking in the final third. To be fair, our goal came from a Blackburn error, so it was just one of those games.
Once we got one back we threw everything at it and we were trying to get back in it but we got hit on the counter attack. It was a real disappointment to concede that third goal.
We have been on a really good run and we need to dust ourselves off now.
We actually played quite well against Blackburn, aside from the mistakes. It wasn’t our best performance of the season but we had a lot of the ball and we just struggled to break Blackburn down. We’ll just have to roll our sleeves up and go again.
We still have four games remaining and it’s important to get back to what we have been doing. We have been in really good form over the last four or five months. It’s not an easy situation to be in, but the boys are ready for the challenge. We’ll go into the last four matches looking for the results that we need.
Blackburn deserve credit because they played really well.
Take nothing away from Blackburn because they were really good. They were probably better today than they were when we played them up at their place, and they had some senior players playing on that day. We gifted them a couple of goals, but they played well and made it tough for us.
The Youth Cup semi-final on Thursday is a big opportunity for some of these players.
It will be a great night for them, especially at London Stadium. There will be several of our players involved and I brought George [Earthy] and Kaelan off today to keep them somewhat fresh for it. Divin scored again so he’s in good form so hopefully he can keep that up.
It’s a fantastic group and they have had a fantastic season so far so let’s hope that they can get across the line on Thursday and hopefully they can go on and win it.
