New Lincoln City caretaker managerial duo Chris Moyses and Grant Brown suffered a baptism of fire as they saw their side defeated 2-1 by Altrincham at Sincil Bank on Tuesday night.
Moyses and were put in charge on Monday after manager Gary Simpson was placed on gardening leave but could do little to change the Imps fortunes around.
A peach of a goal from Simon Richman and a header from Damian Reeves gave the visitors a 2-0, much to the anger of the home fans.
Substitute Conner Robinson pulled one back for the Imps, with a cheekily lifting the ball over the Altrincham ‘keeper, but the hosts failed to equaliser, squandering two fantastic chances.
Both Tom Miller and Jordan Burrow failed to find the target with headers, when perhaps they should have scored.
Moyses was disappointed with the first half from his team but refused to criticise his team after a tough few days.
“It is difficult. We’ve got different ideas to previous managers and we’ll stick with them. We changed system tonight which didn’t particularly work well in the first half but I thought when we went to 433 we looked a lot better.”
“For the whole of the first half I thought we were off it, completely from the top to the bottom, and I will take the blame for that. We changed to a system and it didn’t work for us.”
“They worked very hard, can’t take that away from them, they did very well. We weren’t at it, we spoke about it at half time, hence the changes.”
However, Moyses did see positives from his side.
“I thought for the last 25 minutes we had a go when we got Conner, Jake and Tommo on, we looked lively, we moved the ball a bit better and we look more of a threat.”
“We’ve got to be strong, stick to what we believe and we will be okay.”
It has been a whirlwind few days for Moyses, and Brown, having stepped forward to the manager’s job on Monday.
“I met the players yesterday, we had a group meeting and then we met individual. Grant [Brown] give them the training session, which we trained very brightly, everyone was fine, no issues at all.”
“I am upset [about the performance]. I’m upset for my staff because we’ve worked hard with them to get them right mentally, not so much on the training ground because we haven’t had the time yet.”
“We’re in Thursday, we’re in Friday, we’ll travel down to Eastleigh on Friday in a much better state then we are in now.”
Despite the poor start, Moyses remains confident going forward and insists everyone is ready for the fight, despite resounding boos from the fans at half time and full time on Tuesday night.
“It’s a big job, there is no two ways about that but I am up for it, the players are up for it.”
“They [the fans] have got the right to make their feelings felt, I’ve done it myself. It comes with the territory and I will not be fazed with it.”
“At the end of the day, I don’t let these people from Lincoln down. I am a Lincoln person, I am very proud to be a Lincoln City fan and I can assure you we will be better.”