Around 130 supporters attended the meeting which was chaired by HUISA's Keith Dodd and took place in the 'events' room on the first floor of the newly-refurbished Starlite Rooms.
In his opening words, Peters welcomed supporters.
"This is something new, now this has opened up we feel that the people are going to come and spend their money here before the game need to get a little bit extra. So we felt it would be a good idea for me to come in and tell you the team before others can get it unless you've read it already on Bulls News!
"And we'll why there are changes. The team never changes for no reason. It's changed because something has gone on. We want you to know about it.
"We want you to ask some questions. We don't mind how tough the questions are. If you want to ask why someone is not playing, or why the system is what it is, then it helps.
"At the end of the day it is your football club. We want you to take part and get involved in it."
Peters then revealed the team. He mentioned why loan keeper David Cornell was not in the squad.
"Cornell is still at Swansea. He's been ill for a week or so. Chances are he might want to go back to Swansea in January anyway.
"There might be a few people wondering why Harry (Pell) has been left out. I think he's looking a bit tired at the moment. I think he suffered badly in the last game. He wasn't at his best and he's a young lad. I think that over the past four or five games we've been attacking teams very well, we've been in winning position on lots of occasions and it's a travesty that we've given the games away. Especially here.
"We've looked back at every goal we've conceeded since the Swindon match. None of them occasions have we lost the ball, or the goal, by bad play, we've usually lost the ball from a stupid mistake. And a lot of them mistakes have involved the two mid-field players.
"So we are looking to strengthen the mid-field by making sure the two people in mid-field have got a defensive mind, because what we've been playing over the past few weeks is four at the back and six attacking.
"We felt we needed to toughen up because we can't keep getting into winning positions and losing games. We've done that too often. We've got to man up, get a bit tougher, make sure we get in front and see the game out."
Later in the forum Peters was questioned by a lady supporter about the lack of subs at the recent home game against Port Vale.
"I think it's a very good point. They (Vale) were 1-0 down, there was about 20 minutes to go and they brought on a whole new forward line.
"But we were winning. If we were winning 1-0 and you want us to change the side and then we start losing, you'll be saying why did we make the substitutions."
The lady was not pleased with Peters reply.
"I'm here to try and help you," quipped Peters. "I'm here to try and tell you why these things happen. This is new. There's not many other clubs that would do this. Especially when we've just lost five or six games on the trot.
"I'm brave enough to come here. Ask us the questions, we'll tell you why we do it. If you don't like it I can't do anything about that but I'll tell you the truth.
"Their manager was in a position that he had to change the game as he was 1-0 down. We're in the position where we're 1-0 up, we're attacking them and we had four chances.
"Now if we had changed the game then, and we had lost, you'd say we did you change the game. They scored close to the end and then we made a substitution but it was too late - the game was too late because we lost in the last minute."
Asked why the sub wasn't made at 1-1, Peters said "there was only a minute between it being 1-1, there was only a minute in-between. This is the crazy thing. We lose a goal and heads drop.
"If you want us to be better at dealing with that, we have to have players who are tough enough to say look we've let a goal in but we're going to keep at it and we're going to turn this back into a 2-1 for us not a 2-1 for them.
A supporter then questioned Peter's mann-up view. Why pick two of the smallest players in mid-field?
"It doesn't mean if you're 6ft 2in then you're tough and if you're 5ft 6 in you're not, that's rubbish. That's nothing to do with manning up.
"We've got two players there in Purdie and Clist who will run and chase and work as hard as they possibly can. And we need them to do that.
"In Nicky and Harry, they're young lads, not the most physical. They've got good footballing abilities, Harry takes us forward brilliantly, makes great runs and takes us forward. But defensively we've been awful in mid-field for the last four or five games since we changes from three in mid-field to only two.
"We either go back to three in mid-field which no-one wanted. When we were playing 4-5-1 everyone was moaning we didn't have two forwards, everyone wanted 4-4-2.
"We feel as we are getting fitter we can play 4-4-2. We feel we are a better attacking team but we've got to get better defensively and in the last four or five games defensively in mid-field we've been poor near the end of games.
"The two we've put in tonight will make more tackles. We need players in mid-field to run and stop the opposition."
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Saturday, December 31, 2011
The Pre-Match Forum
