Southend United's Paul Sturrock: We need to react to our worst home display of the season (From Echo)

Southend United's Paul Sturrock: We need to react to our worst home display of the season

11:58am Friday 15th March 2013 in Sport By Paul Sturrock

TUESDAY night’s game against AFC Wimbledon was our worst home performance of the season so far and we need a strong reaction in tomorrow’s game with Torquay United.

They may be down towards the foot of the table but we’ve already learnt the hard way this year that a low league position means very little at all.

That is particularly the case with Torquay because they made the play-offs last season and still have some quality players in their squad.

We know we will be in for a difficult game and we will certainly need to play far, far better than we did against AFC Wimbledon.

It was all very much doom and gloom after the game but we will have a team meeting today where we will talk things through and really rally the troops.

Our injury situation certainly has helped and when we had a settled side we went on a great unbeaten run.

But I’m not going to be using that as an excuse because we have to push on and work our way back up the league table.

We were overtaken by two other teams after losing against Wimbledon and we’re now 10th in the table which is something we’re not happy about and need to sort out during the final quarter of the season.

That makes tomorrow’s game must win but so was Tuesday and one or two players will pay the price for their poor performance when it comes to picking the team.

Luke Prosser will definitely be out as he starts a two match suspension and it was stupidity on his behalf to get the yellow card like he did in the last minute against Wimbledon.

Someone on nine bookings should be making a challenge like that and I will certainly be having words with him so he will definitely know I’m not very happy about the situation.

We will have to change the back four without him again and we’re very hopeful of bringing in other players on loan in time for them to play against Torquay.

It’s all in the melting pot at the moment and some water has to go under the bridge before it can happen but we’re confident that the squad will be strengthened before tomorrow’s game starts.

However, one player who won’t be involved is Danny Mayor who has now gone back to Sheffield Wednesday after his loan spell ended.

I thought Danny did well in glimpses during games but he picked up an injury towards the end of his time here and I also felt he wasn’t quite consistent enough.