Moore said, “The first 45 minutes were as bad as I’ve seen from us. It was inept and I want to know why. With the ability we’ve got we should be steamrollering sides like Southend, but I bet it’s a long time since they had an easier half of football. There are players who think they just have to turn up, rather than earning their results by showing some fight. They had a rude awakening in the first half and I was stood there feeling embarrassed to be manager. Our fans were probably embarrassed as well, which makes it even worse. We were a shambles at the back, all over the place, and we should have been better equipped when they got us under the cosh."
“We gave a young kid (James Lawson) a free header for the first goal, and Marc Tierney wants locking up for the second because he lost track of his man just as we were about to get out of jail by coming in 1-0 down. That isn’t what professionals do, it’s pub football and I’ve told them what I think in no uncertain terms. It’s not as though we had a team full of young lads out there. There were players like Rob Scott, Terrell Forbes, Paul Warne and Andy Liddell, but we never saw them until a much better second half."
“Southend caused us problems far too easily, even though I’d changed things round so that Forbes and Tierney weren’t playing in midfield. They hadn’t looked comfortable in that position, but they didn’t look comfortable in a flat back four either. We knew their left winger (Mitchell Cole) was going to be the big threat, and we talked about stopping Southend by stopping that one player. What happens? The left winger makes both their goals. It was like Fred Karno’s out there. What worries me is that Southend weren’t that great. If we’d been up against one of the top sides, as we will against Huddersfield on Saturday, it would have been worse. A good team would stick four or five past us if we played like that again. It would be over at half-time and forget about any comebacks."
“Unless we make massive improvements, it’s going to reach that point where we are looking at the sides below us and worrying about getting sucked into trouble. We should be looking at the top instead of the bottom, but it won’t happen unless we are sharper and stronger in both boxes. I don’t want everything to be negative because the lads showed some courage in the second half and we might have sneaked a point if Chris Killen had done better. But it astounds me that good players can perform like that. It’s nothing to do with gelling, its about leadership and the right attitude.”