Daily Catch Up - Saturday 23 March

“The game last year was really good, great atmosphere. They’ll bring a lot and we’ll have a good atmosphere, as we always do. It was an enjoyable game last year and, hopefully, it’s the same again.

“Our home form has been really good. I think that we’ve given the fans something to cheer about recently, and they’ve certainly backed us in that aspect. The game last year was really good, great atmosphere, it was a real good one to play in and a great result in the end. I think that today will be no different, it’s important that we start well and get the crowd on-side as we have done in the last couple of months.

"They’re on a good run of form away from home, and we feel like we can give anyone a game at home. It will be a real good occasion, add into the mix the manager, and what he did for the club as a player – it’s got all the ingredients for a real good game, and we know we’ve got to perform well to get anything out of it.”

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“Obviously we’re all a bit deflated. We felt we should’ve got the win, to concede late on like that feels a bit like a loss. We’ll regroup, we’ll go again, we’ve got another big game at Blackpool next week, so preparation starts now for that.

“It’s gutting, really, to work so hard and defend so well for the majority of the game. I don’t think they had that many chances at all, Mace made a great save towards the end of the first-half, and obviously the lad put one in from thirty yards, but apart from that we never really looked tested. It was disappointing to lose what we thought was a soft goal at the end.

“It’s a great strike, but I thought we reacted really well once that goal went in. We got back on the front foot again, and obviously got a bit of luck with the own goal, but I thought we had started to build the pressure a little bit. At 2-1, we thought we had done enough, but obviously that wasn’t the case.

“I know we’re four points from the bottom four, so technically it’s a point gained, but it doesn’t feel like that at the moment.

“We’re just trying to put as much distance between ourselves and the bottom as possible, and start to cement our place in the top-half, hopefully. We’ve got an opportunity to do that at Blackpool next week, they’re going well, it’ll be a difficult game, but it’s one that we’ll be up for.”

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"It feels like a loss because we were up with injury-time to play.
“We obviously outwitted them at the start of the game the game with the formation that we played and took control of the match from that by getting our full-backs on the ball.

“We dominated their centre-forwards, in Tom Nichols and Clarke-Harris, and that allowed us to get on the ball and move it, and Lameiras and Freddie Ladapo to play further forward.

“It was a very good performance at home for us. We should be sitting here with three points. I knew we would score. I said to everyone before the game that we would score – we scored two goals; I said we would score off a set-play – and we scored off a set-play – because we know that they are weak, defensively, from set-plays.

“I didn’t see them scoring the way they did from Clarke-Harris, which was an unbelievable strike and we should have made a tackle before that, and we could have done better in the first half with the opportunities inside the 18–yard box, but we didn’t.

"I didn't see them scoring. I didn’t see how they were going to score. We were dealing well with them through the middle of the pitch and, if it was going to be something, it was going to be from a cross, and that’s what happened.

“You get to that stage of the game when you aren’t really allowing Bristol Rovers to see sight of your goal, and they put one ball into the box – there were a lot of players inside the box – and Reilly’s been able to get a flick on it into the bottom corner.
“We probably went too deep, just in the last minutes of the game, or we didn’t clear our lines properly. If we had done that, we would have seen out the game. Reilly is always on the front foot and gets himself into these positions.

“It was a good spectacle; 2-2; goals were scored again at home. Over the piece, we are happy with the performance.

“We are performing well and creating opportunities. We were the team that was in ascendancy in the first half; when we went back to winning 2-1, Bristol Rovers pushed back against us.

“We’ve added to our points total today; we’ve taken our unbeaten run at home to eight games; and we feel that it’s another point gained.”

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