Concentration is now on next match

Micky Adams was hardly in a festive mood following the defeat against MK Dons on Saturday but says they now have to concentrate on the next game.

- and the manager of course - will be in on Christmas Day preparing for the game. Notts County are the visitors to Vale Park on Boxing Day and the players

The manager said: “We never got to grips with MK Dons – having said that, the first two goals were set-piece goals, second phase opportunities for them that are avoidable.

“We look back at the first goals and the boy has hit it from thirty-five yards, so we have to question the desire to close the ball in the first place and then maybe a little bit of what the goalkeeper is doing, but it was disappointing.

“We didn’t show up. I thought their movement caused us problems, we never got to grips with it but we should have done.

“We’ve done enough work on the training ground and the video we have shown them of MK Dons highlighted the problems we would face, but we never got to grips with it for whatever reason.

“It is disappointing, we had a good following here again and I want to apologise to them for the performance, but as I have said may times before, we have to turn up.

“When we do we are a good side and when we don’t we are an average side and today we were an average side – we looked like that last turkey on the shelf on Christmas Eve.

“In the second half we got slightly further up the pitch and didn’t allow the boy Reeves to drop into midfield and cause us problems and we got people round him.

“We started with a team where we tried to put people in the right positions, other than Carl Dickinson – everybody should have been able to cope with what we have asked them to do but some looked a little bit short of match fitness.

“We can’t dwell on this result, we have got a game on Thursday and we will be preparing all next week and that includes Christmas Day and we will be hopefully trying to put that right”