'It's hugely frustrating:' Neil Critchley assesses Blackpool's 1-1 draw with Oxford United

Neil Critchley (Photographer Lee Parker / CameraSport)Neil Critchley (Photographer Lee Parker / CameraSport)
Neil Critchley (Photographer Lee Parker / CameraSport)
Neil Critchley states Blackpool deserved more from their 1-1 draw with Oxford United.

Matthew Pennington opened the scoring for the Seasiders during the first half, before Mark Harris quickly pulled the visitors back level- with both goals coming from corner routines.

Neither team were able to find a winner at Bloomfield Road despite having further chances, with U’s keeper Jamie Cumming stopping a Kyle Joseph header, while Billy Bodin hit the post with a free header in the latter stages.

“It’s hugely frustrating,” Critchley stated.

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"Oxford are a good team, but we dominated in the second half and pushed them back. We had clear supremacy, like we did away from home. We’ve drawn both games 1-1, but if you look at the balance of play then I feel as if anyone deserved to win either game then it was us.

"I understand there’s frustration when you don’t win games, but however difficult that is, I’ve got to look beyond the result and look at the process. All you can do is prepare and give yourselves the best chance of winning.

"It was a good standard for League One, but we’re disappointed we’ve not taken three points to be honest. We started the game well, and scored from a well worked set piece. The disappointment is the goal they scored so soon after and the manner of it, it was uncharacteristic from us. I think that knocked us a little bit. After taking the lead we didn’t switch on quick enough; we weren’t focused from the kick off. We didn’t quite get our bearings, and lost ourselves for a minute or two.

"They missed a big chance before half time, but we had one or two ourselves, but after the break we were dominant and pushed them right back. We just lacked that moment- it just didn’t quite go for us. We were trying to force the winner and you need a little bit of luck but we didn’t quite have that.

"In the last few games we’ve not got the points we’ve deserved. You can see the effort and the performance levels haven’t been poor, we’ve been worse and collected more points.”

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