Manager reflects back on 0-0 draw with Chesterfield
Manager Graham Alexander spoke to Cod Army Player after the draw against Chesterfield and admitted in the end he was happy enough with the point.The draw means Town are the first side to reach double figures in League One this season leaving Alexander pleased with the grit and determination shown: “It was a tough game for us. We weren’t at our best
today, especially in the first half. In the second half we showed what we’re about threatened Chesterfield a couple of times and played on the front foot.
“It’s a clean sheet which we are really happy with because it shows we’ve been working hard defensively and as a team have been working hard to make sure we are difficult to beat. We’ve got 10 points out of four games and we have got to maintain those standards and make sure we don’t let ourselves slip.”
He added: “It is important that when things aren’t going as smoothly as we want that we don’t get frustrated and go gung-ho and lose games which we did last season, especially at home, we lost a few games where we definitely should have at least drawn.
“We needed to make sure we recognised that at the end of last season, we recognised that we needed to do better here defensively as a team to make sure that even if we are not 100% at the races we get something out of it and that’s what we’ve done today.
“I get just as frustrated as the players at times when things don’t go your way, especially when you’ve done so well in the previous games. I know from experience that it isn’t like that every week and maybe I need to calm myself down a little bit as well and just make sure that we keep everyone concentrated on what we want to do this season.
“I was just pleased that for the second half we got a response, the players responded themselves, they knew that they hadn’t been at it and second half they did something about it.”
Speaking about the opposition he said: “They’re a good team, we know that, they came up as champions.
“They’ve had a very good start to the season as well. We knew their qualities as they’ve got virtually the same team as last year and we knew we’d have to defend a certain way but we also wanted to take the game to them but I didn’t think we did that.
Adding: “We defended reasonably well in the first half but we didn’t give them a threat of their own and that’s not how this team plays. We attack and want to win games and second half we did that.”
“Every week there is positives to take and obviously things we can improve on but we also know what we did wrong today. Taking things like that into account it is important we build on that and not concede a goal.
“We did that as side well today, we just couldn’t find the fluidity to our play to create as many chances we’d hope but you’ve got to give Chesterfield credit for that as well.”
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