Head coach Scott Brown spoke to the media after his side played out a 1-1 draw with Forest Green Rovers at Highbury on Tuesday evening.
The Cods managed to come back into the league clash after Harvey Bunker opened the scoring midway through the first half with Callum Morton bringing it back to level terms in the second half after his skilful finish.
Here’s what the gaffer said after the game:
On the draw and Rooney’s quality going forwards…
“For the amount of chances we created, especially in the first half, we were disappointed when we came in at the break a goal down. We changed the formation at half-time and brought Danny [Andrew] to, hopefully, create a few more chances for us and he managed to do that.
“We still couldn’t get the ball into the back of the net though and we had to did deep. There was a lot of chances, a lot of balls, and even controlled large parts of the game but, at the end of the day, if you don’t score goals, you can’t win games of football.
“We had that little bit of quality in the final third from Roons [Shaun Rooney] to pick out Callum Morton and his finish was fantastic to finish off the move as well. That was the least we deserved, but we are still disappointed not to come away with three points today.”
On the positives from the night and the changes…
“You have to take the positives out of this; we created so many chances in the first half, but you have to put the ball in the back of the net. I’d like to see us score and go up the park to double that because it’s been a long time since we’ve been in front and controlled a game from there.
“We decided to freshen the team up a little bit, we tried to do that as much as possible by using [Cian] Hayes’ pace to help us out up top and he’s disappointed in his performance tonight. He had a chance that he could have put in the back of the net, but he’s young and still learning.
“We need to help him out as once he gets into the final third, he’s a little magician and has the ability to pick out the final pass or go by himself as well.
On individual performances and keeping faith in the lads…
“Callum wants to play as a striker, and we managed to get him and Joe [Garner] up top. We played the two of them and tried to control the game a little bit more with Carlos [Mendes Gomes] playing in behind, backed up by Roons’ running power, which I thought was excellent today.
“Shaun is a great outlet for us and it’s good to see that he is getting technically better as he is grabbing assists. What he showed was the quality in the final third that we have been missing in the last couple of weeks when he picked his head up and found Callum in the box.
“We’ve got to keep fighting and having faith in the lads – I can’t say a bad word about them tonight because I thought they worked so hard. It takes guts to come back, but I’m disappointed that we didn’t score more goals as we could have killed the game off.”
On the current injury situation in the squad…
“We always put these demands on the players, and they have been fantastic for us - they work hard and give us everything they can. We’ve got a lot of injuries at this moment in time, we have to deal with that and, hopefully, we have a few players back for Accrington on Saturday.
“It’s slowly getting there, but it’s a timely thing. You have to make sure the lads are in good condition before you start throwing them back in, you don’t want to push them into the deep end when they haven’t had any game time or time on the training pitch.”