"We've conceded far too many goals this season" - Hill on Exeter draw

Photo: Jon Coluccio

Archibald-Henville hauls down Adam Le Fondre in the box to give Rochdale their penalty.

Rochdale manager Keith Hill bemoaned his side's defending following Saturday's home draw with Exeter.

Dale took the lead in the 83rd minute after Adam Le Fondre scored the rebound from his saved penalty, but barely a minute later Nathan Stanton felled Stuart Fleetwood in the box to give Exeter a penalty of their own.

Twice Dale surrendered the lead during the game. Lee Thorpe nodded the opener, only for it to be cancelled out by Marcus Stewart's second half strike, and Stewart scored from the spot to deny Dale the three points.

“For me it's two points lost," said Hill. "We can’t keep on conceding stupid goals. I think the first one was just unfortunate but conceding a penalty just after scoring one is just football suicide and I don’t like using that word.

"So again we've made quite a lot of mistakes and we’ve conceded far too many goals this season. We’ve scored more than enough goals and we should be winning games like that especially when we were in the lead twice.

"So I’m disappointed but we are still competing and still competitive. The lads are pretty down now because again the same mistakes have come back to haunt us."

Despite the setback, which followed on the tails of a heavy defeat at the hands of Chesterfield in midweek, the Dale boss remains adamant that Dale will achieve promotion.

"We’re brave and strong and ultimately we will get our prize in promotion. We should have seen the game out today no question about that but we didn’t and we will have to fight again. We got the advantage twice and we should have kept it so we would be serious contenders for automatic promotion.

"But I still expect us to be fully competing. And we will definitely come up from this as it wasn’t a loss and we took a point so it gave us the opportunity to stay third."