Express & Star

Darrell Clarke: The buck stops with me, I'll take it on the chin

Walsall manager Darrell Clarke says Wes McDonald will ‘learn’ after missing a penalty in the home loss to Morecambe after taking the spot kick off designated taker Josh Gordon.

Published

The winger won the first-half penalty before seeing his effort saved by Christopher Mafoumbi, with the score 0-0.

Morecambe then went on to win the game through goals by Steven Old and Carlos Mendes-Gomes and Clarke has revealed striker Gordon should have taken the penalty.

“What should have happened is Josh Gordon should have taken the penalty," he said.

“I’m not going to make a massive thing of it because I’ll deal with it in-house.

“What I will say is Wes has been magnificent since he’s been at the football club and he’ll learn his lesson.

“He obviously felt confident to take it, but that’s not the way we work.

“I’ll deal with that in-house, we’re thoroughly disappointed that he chose to take it and then even more disappointed that he missed.

“He’s held his hands up in the changing room.

“We don’t want to see that, the spirit in the lads is fantastic and the group will forgive him for that.

“He’s been our match winner on numerous occasions and he’ll learn.

“I don’t want to knock Wes McDonald because he’s a confident player and I think it affected his performance for the majority of the game.

“So we have to pick him up and get him back to his best."

The Saddlers failed to reach their performance levels of recent weeks and were condemned to their second defeat in two games.

And Clarke insists he takes responsibility for the below-par display.

“A shocker - we can’t excuse that performance," he added.

“After the penalty miss we got very sloppy and conceded another goal from a set piece.

“We got going a bit towards the end and then get done with a sucker punch.

“But it was no-where near good enough, we know that.

“The fans have every right to feel angry and disappointed with that performance, so I hold my hands up.

“There’s no excuses from myself.

“We’re disappointed to have back-to-back home wins, getting a bit of momentum, but that’s no-where near the standards we’ve set ourselves.

“The buck stops with me on that one, so I’ll take it on the chin."