Jon Stead has called on Bristol Rovers to use Tuesday's Vertu Trophy win over Cambridge United as a platform to further improvements.
The Gas had stormed to a two-goal advantage over the U's in the Round Of 32 outing at The Memorial Stadium on Tuesday evening, thanks to Ellis Harrison's well-taken double, but the visitors fought back into the match through Kelland Watts' scrappy finish on 68 minutes and Sullay Kaikai's late penalty.
It was, in truth, exactly what Neil Harris' side deserved for their efforts in BS7, but the Pirates still claimed victory in the resulting penalty shootout. Fabrizio Cavegn, Jack Sparkes, Luke Thomas and Kamil Conteh all netted their spot-kicks while Luke Southwood's heroics kept out the visitors, sending Rovers into the last 16.
While it was a far from perfect Bristol Rovers performance, Assistant Head Coach Stead could find positives to the in the result, and plenty to build on in a busy run of fixtures in December...
Jon, how’s your heart after that one?
"Yeah, we do make hard work of things. Look, the job’s done and I think that’s probably the main takeaway from it. We’re through to the next round. But a difficult game to watch, from the sidelines and I’m sure from the stands as well."
You say a difficult game to watch: there were parts of that first half that looked pretty exciting for the fans, and to take a two goal lead, that’s a good thing.
"Yes, there are positives. We created some good opportunities and we were quite good on the break, and that’s something obviously that we’re looking to add to our game, is getting the goals. But I think in terms of overall performance, it’s not at the level we need it to be, and I think that’s clear. At times we were really under the cosh, we had to defend our box a lot, and you hope you can do that for the latter stages of the game, but we just allowed the game to come on top of us a bit too much. Like you said the positives are we’ve scored a couple of goals which we’ve not been doing much of recently.
"But it just shows at any level the correlation between playing well and winning football matches doesn’t always marry up. I thought we played miles better on Saturday and didn’t come away with anything, and today not so much and we ended up two-nil ahead at one stage. It’s quite hard to pick the bones out of it. I think the biggest thing is we’ve had a lot of illness in the camp, we’ve had a lot of bodies coming back from injury, and managing minutes to make sure that we’re available to go again on Saturday. So there’s a lot of pieces that are moving around inside that, so sometimes that gives you a bit of a disjointed performance and I think we probably saw the effects of that as the game went on."
As you say it was almost a 180 from the game at the weekend and Ellis Harrison popped up today with two goals, he probably could have had a couple at the weekend but today he’s got himself two and that will do his confidence the world of good.
"Yeah definitely, I think it’ll do the group the world of confidence. I think just putting the ball in the net is the hardest thing in football. I know that from being a striker myself and going through patches when you’re not scoring. It’s difficult, and it’s those moments that are going to get you over the line and win you football matches.
"Like I say to go two-nil up was really really pleasing in the first half, even though I didn’t feel we played very well in the first half, I think there were moments of quality which is the moments that we’ve been lacking in the run that we’ve been on.
"I don’t want to be too negative because we’ve done the job, and when you’re in the spell that we’re in at the minute, any positive you take you grasp onto it and you try and build on it, so we’ll do that."
As you say building on the positives, I currently imagine yourself, gaffer and Rhys are willing the minutes away in that second half and hoping they’re gonna go. But we go to penalties, the lads show a lot of mentality and resilience to get through that as well.
"Yeah definitely. I think you know Luke deserves his moments because he’s been fantastic, especially from the penalty spot. I haven’t seen the penalties back so I don’t really know whether theirs was a penalty, or whether ours was in the box with LT at the end, I don’t really know. But yeah, they showed a bit of grit, they showed a bit of resilience and you know all right, don’t come back from two-nil up to two-two and now it goes to penalties and you go and stick them away. So yeah, pleased in that respect."
As you say a bit of a strange game all in but certainly aspects of that to take into the FA Cup at the weekend and then two hard league games next week as well?
"Yeah definitely, they’re coming thick and fast now in the next couple of weeks and then a busy schedule up to Christmas. Like I say, we take the positives and we take what we can into the next game. We know that Saturday is the FA Cup, it’s going to be a random game again, there’s going to be all sorts kicking off I’m sure, because that’s the way the FA Cup goes. So we need to be ready for that.
"Like I say we take the confidence from getting through, doing the job, which we’ve done consistently in the competition so far. Albeit there’s been some similar nights to that to be honest, God you think back to the Spurs game and… anyway. We’ve got there, and we move on."
