Blues boss Paul Jewell was pleased to finish the season with a win but was unhappy with his side allowed Doncaster back into a match he thought should have been settled inside the first half.

Jewell said: “It’s nice to finish on a victory but I wouldn’t say it was a high. I thought we were cruising at 2-0, and then they got back in it at 2-1 and I thought we were distinctly average in the second half, which shows you that we need to improve the squad.

“The manner in which we concede goals is just not good enough. We don’t do the simple things well enough.

“The problem is that when we get 2-0 up or start a bit of a run we start thinking we’re players and we don’t do the simple things that got us to that stage in the game.

“There are too many players who think they can flick it and give silly fouls away and I even saw one player today [Tommy Smith] give them the ball back for a freekick. I couldn’t believe it, I’ve never seen it before. We should win the Fair Play League for that.

“We just do too many stupid things. I’m really annoyed and angry today because at 2-0 we played well and we should have been out of sight. We had chances to go three or four goals up before they scored, we’ve got to kill them off and we don’t and we’re always susceptible to conceding goals.”

He felt the display was a microcosm of the campaign as a whole: “It sums up the season. For half an hour until we scored the second goal we were in control, we looked like we were going to score every time we went forward, but then we give teams a foothold in games because we stop doing the simple things, the unglamorous things that have got us into those situations. Once we think we’ve cracked it we’re nowhere near as good a team.”

Jewell was pleased to give 16-year-old Byron Lawrence his debut, while Jimmy Bullard came back into the team for the first time since February: “Byron was lively. When the keeper made a save, he was following in. We’ve been trying to get him into the team for a while and we just thought today we’d just give him 10 minutes after the goal.

“Jimmy’s had his difficulties with illnesses and other stuff, but Jimmy’s here next year and every team is picked on its merits, so there’s no one in, there’s no one out of the door. I think today highlighted the need for four or five players to come into our squad.”

The Town boss was delighted for Ryan Stevenson, who scored his first goal for the club: “It was a terrific goal. I think Chopra was disappointed because he put the rebound in. I don’t know whether it was over the line or not, I’ve not seen it again.

“In the first half we could have been out of sight. We had Lee Martin and Chopra against the goalkeeper and we don’t even score. We hit the bar and it’s come down and hit Chopra and bounced out. As I say, we could have been out of sight.”

Doncaster boss Dean Saunders, who felt Stevenson’s goal hadn’t crossed the line was disappointed with the way his team began the match: “We started the game sloppily and I’ve never seen us misplace so many passes.“

“We gave three goals against — penalty, a corner and 35-yarder off the bar, three goals. All the chances they got, we gave them.”

Story syndicated from TWTD.co.uk

Photo: Action Images

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