Grayson Accepts Responsibility For Foxes Mauling

Simon Grayson has come out and spoke to the press after he watched his side take a hammering from Leicester City with six goals going into the terriers goal. The game ended 6-1 to the foxes and Grayson has accepted responsibility for the heavy defeat but has insisted that his players must also take the blame as they all had a poor game today;

"I’m the Manager and I take responsibility for the football team, but you are lost for words at times,” Simon explained. “We came here with a game-plan to try and keep Leicester quiet by keeping things solid and making yourself hard to beat, which is why we played the system that we did, but we started the game dreadfully."

The Foxes were running riot at the beginning of the game.
They netted twice in the opening 20 minutes.

 "We wanted to go with a back four that was nice and solid behind a compact midfield five that would frustrate them, but certain players didn’t do the job that we asked them to do and before you know it you are two goals down and your plan goes out of the window. We switched to a 4-4-2 at that point, but that is a little expansive when you have Leicester playing to their capabilities with the passing, movement and pace they have in their team."

"We weren’t tight enough around the pitch. We knew Leicester would get off to a lightening start, because that’s how they’ve started many games this season, but obviously to go a couple of goals down so early on affected us."

"We asked the lads to go out in the second half and restore a little bit of pride, but only a few minutes in we were four goals down and it was a long slog in the second half for everybody."

Alex Smithies was removed from the game at half time and Grayson explained why this switch was made at the interval;

"Alex got a dead leg in the build-up to one of the goals. He tried to carry on, but he found it a bit too much so he came off."

Ian Bennett was Smithies replacement but even the veteran couldn't stop the terriers from shipping goals in the second half. Two quick fire goals meant Huddersfield were five nil down with over thirty minutes to play and things were not looking good. Grayson explained in his post match interview that the players have to take responsibility for this defeat just as much as he is doing;

"The players have to take a lot of responsibility on board, because they are making the wrong decisions. I’ll take responsibility too as it is my team and my players, but this is the same group of players that were in the top six of the division eight weeks ago that is suddenly making the wrong decisions. You look at Joel Lynch for their third goal. He made an absolutely crazy decision; why didn’t he put his foot through the ball? If we’d got in at half time two goals down we might have been able to address the situation."

"We are a young team, but once players cross the right line they have to make the right decisions – I can’t talk them through things all the time. It’s easy to play when the team is doing well, but we need players to dig in and understand what to do when things aren’t going well."

"You need players that will take responsibility; people with the knowledge of the game and the passion, desire and legs to do everything that I require. It’s worrying. We always look to be positive, but you can’t be positive after today’s performance because we were very lacklustre. All you want your players to do is run around, chase and work but we were second best to everything today. As I said earlier, Leicester have good players and are rightly one of the favourites for the division but they looked streets ahead of us."

"You have to apologise to the supporters for the performance we put out there, but at the same time you have to give credit to Leicester. They are a good team. However, we certainly helped them win the game comfortably today and that is hugely disappointing. We need to do something about it. A few weeks ago everybody was giving us plaudits and perhaps the players started to believe in that and think they are better players than they are? They have stopped working like they did in the first half of the season and are doing things that have got us into this dip that we’re in at this moment in time."