Head Coach Scott Brown spoke to the media after his side’s comfortable 3-0 win over Shrewsbury Town at the Montgomery Waters Meadow on New Year’s Day.
It was the perfect start to the year for the Cods after a quickfire first-half double from forwards Admiral Muskwe and Promise Omochere kicked off the tie before Josh Vela eyed up a third late on in the game to seal the three points and make it a joyous ride home for the squad back to Lancashire.
Here’s what the gaffer had to say in his interview:
On building on the festive results…
“It was a hard one to take, to finish 2022 in the fashion we did in the last two games, but when you look back at the games, you can see we did play some good football, controlled the games at times, and were structurally all right behind the ball, but we struggled in both boxes.
“Today, I felt a little bit more confident as we were more physical and brought a couple of the bigger lads in which caused them a lot of problems. We didn’t have an edge to us when we played Shrewsbury earlier in the season, but today we had that bit between our teeth, and we wanted those points.”
On how the players showed their qualities…
“We bullied them in the first 15-20 minutes, we wanted to go long and a bit direct which isn’t like us to do that, but we did what they did to us at our place. I think we showed the strength in our squad as well today, so I’m delighted for the lads.”
“I’m delighted for Hayesy [Cian Hayes] and Promise [Omochere], and to have Admiral [Muskwe] back was good as well as we had a fresh front three for today’s game which gave us a lot of energy. The lads that have been playing are fantastic players but sometimes you just need a bit of change.
“Promise is one of the strongest people I have ever seen, if he puts his body in, nobody is pushing him off that ball. He just needs to keep working, keep getting that little bit fitter, and work on that quality in the final third as it’s the link-up play we are looking for – it’s a learning curve for him.”
On bringing physicality into the starting line-up…
“I felt calm in terms of the set plays in both boxes, I knew we were going to be fine as we had a lot of height, physicality, and aggression in the players who always want to go and win the ball. We also caused them a lot of problems in their box as well, you’ve got to be physical sometimes and today was one of those days.
“You can’t always be a nice footballing team that’s pretty on the eye, you have to go and get the points you need, so today it was a little bit of a change-up which I said would happen to the lads after the last game – we know we can do it now, but we don’t always have to play this way.
“We’ll decide our game plan depending on which team we are playing against on the day; if we have to go physical, we have that in our locker but if we want to play in a controlled style, we can certainly do that as well.”