Tom Flanagan reflected on his winning goal in a hard-fought win against Gillingham.
BATTLE
"Good win, we had a point to prove to ourselves, the manager and obviously the travelling support who again came in their numbers. I think we proved that point today, just a really good win and we move on from here. I spoke last week about how we don't want teams to think we're a soft touch and we're just a good footballing team. I think we proved today that we've got good tactics, a good style of football but we can mix it up and we're a group of men. We've got some real young lads in there and the manager said afterwards we've got boys from Tottenham and Man City who've probably never played a game like that. They stood up to a man so brilliant."
CHARACTER
"It was really important because results like that can linger. When we went 1-0 down it was a disappointing goal to concede, a couple of mistakes led to it. We could have thought 'Oh, we've had all the ball and it's gone against us' but we played really well later on and kept the ball well. We were sloppy with the ball in the first half but we grinded it out and at the end of the day I thought we played really well."
O'BRIEN GOAL
"That was massive. That was really really big and we'd been knocking on the door, hadn't quite got over the line in terms of a goal and that was the spark we needed . A good time to score and obviously westopped them from having something, because they would have walked into that dressing room confident of keeping a clean sheet in the second half. Like I say, we don't like to do it too easy so we went down to ten men! It just showed a lot of character."
GOAL
"It was really important, it came at an important time. I've scored against Gillingham for Sunderland before so this is obviously my team! I'm glad that we won't be coming back, even if I did score."
CREWE
"Recovery now, we've had the owner and Kristjaan and the manager put their heads together and come up with a really good plan for us in terms of travel. How quick we get down there, how quick we get home, and the rest and recovery to get us ready for the next game. So it's a real joint effort, even the people who aren't here are part of it in respect to other staff members, helping us get over the line."
