Alex Neil spoke after picking up our second win of the season and taking us up to fifth in the table. He gave credit to the Lads after a physical 90 minutes, with tiredness creeping in after Wednesday’s game.
STARTED SLOW
“I think in the first half we were fully aware that was disappointing from us. We've played far better than that, we've competed better than that, we've moved the ball better than that and we didn't really do any of that in the first half. In the game the other night with 10 men for 60 minutes I think it took its toll. I think we looked a bit leggy yesterday and I was slightly concerned with that today and I thought we seen that in the first half.”
EXPECTED IMPROVEMENT
“The pleasing thing is we're still dangerous, we scored a really good goal, Ross scoring from a really good pass. It didn't change the team talk at half time because I was frustrated as were the lads because we have standards and expected minimum levels that we should adhere to in terms of all those things we didn't do well in the first half but what I will say is this group have done so well over such a long period of time you can't perform well all the time, it's impossible and that’s not me making any excuses for them because I made a couple of changes at half time and I made it clear to the lads of the demands that we expect collectively.”
BETTER
“Second half I think we dug in and we were really determined. Much better, competed better and moved the ball better and had more of a threat and could have had a couple of goals, but I'm really pleased to get the points.”
GRINDING
“I think we got to give Stoke credit, first half they were good. They came out with an intensity that they wanted to play with. Second half we more than matched that and done better and you can’t win games by just playing nice football all the time, there is gonna be moments and times where you’re going to dig in and defend, be gritty and I thought we showed a completely different side to ourselves today which you need at any level if you want to pick up points all the time. We certainly done it in different ways and the points we won today were merited in previous matches so it was nice to get them.”
NON-STARTERS CONTRIBUTIONS
“I spoke about that to the team after the game in terms of how important our squad is and how everyone contributes, when the experienced lads came on they really settled us down. Equally the decision I made at half time wasn't solely based around that, we had two bookings as well, the two lads I took off got booked and I felt the way the game was it was becoming a little bit loose, there was a lot of tackles, stops and counter attacks for each team and in my opinion it looked like someone could have potentially got sent off and we couldn't afford for that to happen when we were leading at that point.”
CIRKIN
“I thought Dennis was probably our best player throughout the day, even in the first half when we were not so good I thought he was. He gets done once by a ball over the top by the side and he should have done better with that one but in the main he’s come on leaps and bounds and second half he drove us from that left hand side, got up the pitch, the amount of times he took the ball and drove 60-70 yards and yeah I think most of the lads have come on a ton at the moment. They’re doing really well but we’ve only played four or five games and we need to keep going.”
FATIGUE
“Obviously I think the one during the week has certainly taken its toll on us today, I could feel that yesterday and it worried me. It came to fruition in the first half and I think you can always find that extra bit, you can always dig in a little more and we did that. The next couple of days they’ll rest, they need that, that's gonna be really important and then we’ll get ourselves ready for Norwich.”
