Iron manager Russ Wilcox has hailed his players following the 1-0 victory over Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park.
dgdgd Neal Bishop’s first-half header was the difference between the two sides as United progressed to round two of the Capital One Cup following success in Lancashire.And Wilcox was full of praise for the squad, highlighting the quality shown out on the pitch.
He told The Iron Player: “It was an outstanding performance from start to finish.
“We could have conceded inside the first minute but after that I thought we got a great foothold in the game.
“We passed the ball, we were patient with and without the it and we learnt a few lessons from Saturday.
“Playing against better players, you’ve got to make sure you don’t engage too high up the pitch because that’s when they can hurt you.
“From goalkeeper right through to the strikers, I thought it was a fantastic team performance built on hard work, endeavour, organisation and quality.”
Blackburn made a number of changes to the side that drew with Cardiff in their curtain raiser on Friday night but Wilcox was still delighted with how his team played against Championship opposition.
And the boss was pleased that the squad learnt from some of the mistakes made against Swindon at the weekend.
“We’re really pleased with our performance tonight and I’m really pleased with the response from the players,” he continued.
“We debriefed the game on Monday and spoke about things we need to do better and we learnt some lessons from Swindon tonight I thought.
“It’s that mental response coming away to Blackburn, knowing it’s going to be a tough game.
“Blackburn made 10 changes but they’ve still got quality within the squad and there were still names on the team sheet that are very experienced Championship players.”
The Scunthorpe players haven’t been used to losing games during Wilcox’s reign in charge which is why he was delighted with how the team reacted to the 3-1 setback at Swindon three days ago.
He also highlighted the way the team saw the game out against Rovers as a major positive to take out of the cup clash.
He added: “You’re always disappointed to lose games and we’ve not been used to losing after last season.
“But we reacted to that (the loss at Swindon) and we looked at the things we thought we could improve on.
“There were lots of positives to work on from Saturday as well, we created seven golden opportunities away from home and I think we took that into today’s game.
“We’ve been solid as a team, we were hard to break down tonight and we saw the game out really well.”
See much more from Russ Wilcox, and others, on The Iron Player.