County v Stevenage: Match Thread (18/02/2023)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand relax

Rydel to finish it off 95th minute.

That win sends a few messages to those all around us.

Salford lose, Northampton lose, Bradford lose. Up to 6th !!! 4 points of automatic with a game in hand.

We can dream.

and today's ref!

1. Good workrate
2. Good 'fighting' against a physical side

earned:

3. A number of good chances to feed the ball in from wide areas
4. A couple of moments when said chances were executed well enough to make it largely comfortable

aided by:

5. Very good management/coaching which drew up an effective game plan, limited the effectiveness of their set pieces and then controlled the game with some neat subs/decisions (height from Johnson, Wright shielding at times in front of defence, energy from Rydel)

Better execution earlier in the game (Hippolyte. Camps and Hussey could have put in better balls) could have seen an even bigger win. And, to be frank, we are 3 goals better than Stevenage. We just need to always ensure 1 and 2 are in place and then execute more balls to feet on crosses and more balls in the 'corridor' when not possible to pick some9ne out, and get aggressive in attacking such balls. It was there so many times because they couldn't cope with the movement and rotations, especially Hussey, Collar and Hippolyte on the left.

I couldn't see whether our early shout for a penalty was legit from our angle and maybe the camera won't have caught it either. But we remained concentrated and it was just very random moments, such as sliced high balls, that caused moments of uncertainty.

A 7.5/8 out of 10 performance and we were way better than them. Yeah, things can turn out well this season. We have a good manager, they looked coached, the players can put in good shifts and there's enough to keep clean sheets when we see that hunger to block and cover for one another on show, while the ways we can score are numerous at the other end.

Well done, DC and the boys. Keep that focus and hard work and I don't think many sides will turn us over for the rest of the season. Very pleased coming away today.