|
" I’m delighted with the performance, I thought that we set our stall out tonight to defend properly, which I didn’t feel we did on Saturday. We were clinical, in the second-half especially in front of goal and we got our reward.
" I thought that in the first-half we had opportunities to have really filled our boots and got a few goals but we didn’t take them. We’ve asked for a response from the players, that’s all we’ve wanted from them, we said that this was going to be a difficult place to come and we had to roll our sleeves up.
" We’ve actually made it easier than we expected to but maybe that is credit to us because we’ve done things right tonight. We’ve got the ball forward, we started with the three strikers and we caused problems with our forward play. It really is a big result because this isn’t an easy place to come to, as a lot of teams have found out this year.
" On the fourth goal, the lads said that nobody got a touch on it and it went directly in. I was hoping Michael Bridges was going to do that because I felt a bit bad taking him off when I was wanting him to get his hat-trick, I said that if he slotted it away I’d drag him off and that was the way it turned out to be.
" I’m delighted he’s got a hat-trick, he’s worked hard for his chances. In the first-half I thought we had opportunities, maybe four or five, that we should have been better in front of goal with and we didn’t take our chances. "
" We don’t know where Danny Livesey’s pass came from, we’ve got to be honest. We’ve never seen that from Danny before but that summed his performance up tonight. I was critical on Saturday of them and I was critical on Monday and Tuesday when we talked about it.
" Tonight though I thought Kevin Gray was absolutely superb. He won every header and that’s the Kev Gray we know, that’s him coming through and heading the ball. Danny Livesey is covering round and he’s heading and defending properly and then when he does that he chucks in a little piece of magic – like that ball for Bridgey.
" We had some really good football played tonight. The pitch I thought was better than I expected, there was only the far corner which was like a swamp and the rest was good so it was there for us to play football. Once we settled down we did pass the ball.
" We got off to a great start with Karl (Hawley) finishing that one and then I thought we lost it a little bit again. We allowed them space, we couldn’t get to grips with their midfield players and the way that I was asking our lads to play. Once we got the second goal though we really went for the throat and caused them all sorts of problems.
" We wanted to improve the goal difference, we were talking about it earlier this afternoon in the hotel when we’d had pre-match and we were saying it would be nice if we could get five. I’ve got to be honest though that I never even expected it, I was just coming here to get three points and move us on to the Cheltenham game at home. Now that is the most important thing because we’ve got to make sure we do it right in that one. "
" I must admit that I was a little bit concerned, not about the preparation going into tonight, but more about the recovery for Saturday. Hopefully we’ll get them all freshened up, we’re obviously going to have to make a change with Murph (Peter Murphy) being suspended but we’ve got Zigor (Aranalde) back for the weekend and we’ll decide which way we go about it then.
" I felt we needed to do something with the team selection, I wanted to be positive tonight, I wanted to come here and have a right good go at them. I felt that the defence of theirs was a place where we could cause problems from the reports we’ve had from Russ (Richardson – chief scout). I wanted to go for it tonight, I felt we needed to and the reward was there.
" Tonight we haven’t won because of the system, it’s nothing to do with that, it’s not tactics. It’s about the players performing right tonight, we lost on Saturday because the players didn’t perform, not because of the tactics or the selection but because they didn’t perform. Tonight though we’ve turned that around, given ourselves a massive lift and we’ve made everybody sit up and take notice again and hopefully this is the way forward for us.
" Cheltenham have had a great night in the Cup last night and they’ll all be looking forward to the Newcastle game. We’ve got to make sure that we are prepared for it properly and we’re ready to go and have a right good go at them.
" The support was incredible again. We were talking this afternoon and saying that we didn’t expect many to come tonight because it’s not an easy journey but they’ve surprised us again because of the turnout and they’ve made some noise. We’ve given them something to shout about and hopefully we can get a good crowd on Saturday and we can give them something to shout about as well. "