United defender Jordan Clarke believes that after a slow start he and his team mates grew into the game and gave Chelsea an almighty scare at the weekend.
Diego Costa gave the hosts a 12-minute lead, with Reuben Loftus-Cheek scoring in the second half to finish a resilient Iron off and leaving the scores at 2-0.“I thought the first half we took a little bit of time to get to grips with them as an attacking force,” he told The Iron PlayerHD.
“My distribution wasn’t good. However, as a group we grew into the game and myself personally.”
As previously mentioned, United started slow and allowed an onslaught of Chelsea pressure, but something seemed to click during the course of the first half, which saw the Iron finish the first 45 minutes on top.
“Even in the first half I felt that Kevin van Veen, Luke Williams and Paddy Madden all worked really well and were causing them problems," he said.
“Second half I thought we were a lot more solid, and I was a lot happier with my performance. We made some good tackles, good interceptions, battled well and got forward.”
Clarke almost brought United back into the game in the final minutes as he unleashed a beautiful strike, only for Asmir Begovic in the Blues net to be equal to it.
He said: “I don’t know how the goalkeeper's kept my shot out to be honest. I’ve never hit a ball truer than that, and he’s got a fingertip to it and put it on to the crossbar. On a whole I think we can take some very big positives out of that.”
Proud of how he and his team mates kept the scores down, Clarke reflected on a comparison between Sunday’s game, and a match when he faced Arsenal earlier in his career.
He stated: “I’ve played in the FA Cup a couple of times against big teams before, and one particular game against Arsenal where we started well and then the floodgates opened because they just open you up.
“I felt with Scunthorpe as a team we did very well. We shut them out, and if we had done better on the goals we’d have got the draw and taken them back to Glanford Park.”
On a final note, the left back was keen to state that the intensity the Iron played to against Chelsea needs to be taken into Saturday’s match in Blackpool.
“We can take a lot of positives from it. They are the current Premier League champions, but in the second half I thought we matched them," he said.
“We’ve shown that we can play out from the back against the Premier League champions, so why not continue that in League One, and push on and take it in to Blackpool."
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