The Rocks suffered a humiliating 4-0 drubbing at home to lower league Margate in the FA Cup on Saturday on the back of a poor start to their league campaign. Blake has seen his squad ravaged by injuries and while the sidelined players are obviously a factor, the manager is reticent to blame his side’s failings entirely on absent personnel. He says Bognor must now lick their wounds after a challenging period to go again when Cray Wanderers are the visitors to Nyewood Lane on Saturday for an Isthmian premier division clash.
He said: “When things go wrong within football, there are no easy fixes, no magic formulas to get your team back on track. What you need more than anything else is a resetting of targets, a fresh approach to enhancing the bond within the dressing room and possibly above all, a determination to knuckle down and work through the problems with sheer hard graft.
“This is what we have been doing during the lead up to our game against Cray Wanderers. We have had to regroup and had and have some frank and open dialogue about how we got it so wrong in the 4-0 defeat at home to Margate.“No one likes to make excuses for poor performances. And let’s get it out there — it was a very poor performance with not much at all to take from it in a positive manner. But, and there is a but, you do have to look at the injuries we have suffered to key players since the season kicked off. I believe losing players such as Craig Robson, Tommy Block, Harvey, Whyte, Lucas Pattenden, Hayden Gale, Ben Anderson and others have impacted us in a massively negative fashion.
“But that’s football and we must get on with it and lick our wounds and try to bounce back as best we can. Facing Cray gives us that chance. We won’t stop in our efforts to bring cohesion, patterns of play and unity to the squad.
“And I am convinced when we can call upon our full squad, we will be a match for most sides. But in the meantime, it’s hard work and taking on responsibility that will get us through. For fear of repeating myself the players that have come in in the absence of those on the injured list are very young. In an ideal world we would look to blood these players throughout the course of the season so that they could get game time that would help them develop as players. But life is not as rosy as all that. “These young lads have had to come in and learn a brutal lesson and the best thing that they can take from it is to never want to suffer as we have suffered in certain games this season.
“Just a week before we lost to Margate, we turned in a decent display to beat a strong Wingate & Finchley team 2-1. It’s hard to believe that was just seven days before our cup exit. Now the challenge is to get back to that form, which will breed confidence within the camp and set us on the right path.
“I take on board various comments made after the Margate defeat and except that supporters have a right to air their opinions. What I would ask our magnificent fans to do though is to temper their frustrations, by looking at the bigger picture here. Rest assured the management team here will not tire of trying to improve our situation and that begins against Cray.”