Head coach Scott Brown spoke to the club after his side managed to beat Oxford City 3-1 and secure a spot in the next round of the Emirates FA Cup.
The game started in Town’s favour as Lewis Warrington opened the scoring from range, netting his first for the club, before a Paddy Lane brace – one from the edge of the box and the other being direct from a corner – finished the home tie off in the opening round of the competition.
Here’s what the gaffer had to say:
On the game as a whole…
“We’re proud to get through, it’s great for all the lads and everyone at the club so we will all be looking forward to the draw for the next round which is on Monday at 7 o’clock I think. Work rate is key, and we ask this of them every day, that they come in, work hard, and give 100%.
“Everyone knows it was their cup final coming here and we had to make sure we worked hard and put on a performance fitting to win the game. The main thing was to get through today with no injuries so we can build on it and it was also great to see Toto [Nsiala] coming back as well.
“The performance levels could always be a bit better – we got a bit sloppy as the mindset might have been that we are facing a part-time side, even though I thought Oxford were good today, moved the ball well, and controlled parts of the game.”
On individual performances…
“You’ve got to be proud of the lads for that; They managed to score three goals here and Paddy [Lane]’s finish was exceptional; he’s told me he meant it because he saw the goalie off his line the first time and I’ll believe him at this moment in time.
“It was a great strike from Lewis [Warrington], him and Vels [Josh Vela] were always going to swap over as we only wanted Lew to play 60 minutes before bringing Josh on which seemed to work quite well. It’s good that he managed to get a goal after 20 minutes – his touch and finish was brilliant.
“In terms of Brendan [Wiredu], we played him there as a one-time only thing as we thought we would have large periods of time with the ball so we tried to use energy and quality, but they pressed us quite well and stopped us playing out like that as you would expect them to do.”
On changing strategies and improvements…
“We struggled to score goals at the start of the season, we’ve changed our formation and may even change again for Saturday as well, but we will deal with that when it comes. Going forward. We’re happy that we scored three goals for the second game in a row as it puts the lads in a good mindset.
“You don’t want to concede goals the way we did, and it comes from everyone getting tight, even the midfielders not getting close enough as it allowed Oxford to run off CJ [Carl Johnston] as well so we still need to work on small details, and we’ll also put some work in controlling the game from the front.”