The hosts performed excellently and were beaten after Marcus Antonsson’s goal, which came against the run of play on 58 minutes.
It meant Scunthorpe suffered their first league loss of the season, and the boss provided his reaction in an interview with iFollow Iron.
ON THE PERFORMANCE…
GA: I think we were excellent on the night and it was our best performance of the season to be honest, especially considering the opposition and the talent they have in their ranks. We were superb, and I thought we dominated for large periods but really needed to score during those times. We didn’t and there is always a danger of a goal against, especially when you face a team with the quality they have. We’re disappointed with the goal. It was a poor one to concede from our perspective, especially after being so tight so far this season. I don’t think we made them work extremely hard, or create something fantastic. It was a good cross and finish but the way they got into those positions was disappointing from our perspective. If you take that one incident out of the game, then I have to be really happy with the players’ performance on the night. We deserved to win the game, let alone draw it.
ON LESSONS TO LEARN FROM THE MATCH…
GA: The game is about scoring goals and winning games. For all the play we had, and the good positions we got in, we needed to score – as simple as that. It’s something for us to try to improve on because we don’t want to continue to play well and create chances, and not score. You get games like that, but hopefully not too many. At this stage of the season, we want to build our performances and I feel we have improved each game. That culminated in our best performance this evening, but that’s football. You need to come out on top during the vital moments and we didn’t on the night. We can hold our heads high in going up against what is probably the biggest club in this division and showing what we’re about as a club. We need to take the many positives from the performance and put that little bit of icing on the cake, which is scoring goals.
ON HOW LEE NOVAK DID ON HIS FIRST START…
GA: He did well and showed what he’s about. He brought others into play and was a physical presence for us. I still think he’s a little short of match fitness so that full game will have done him the world of good. He created a chance for himself with the chest and volley, which he was unlucky with. He’s been a goal threat in the games so far. We just need to get that finishing touch to the play we have at the moment. We made a couple of changes and freshened it up, giving the team a bit of extra impetus with two games in four days – we had that to be fair, but it was just one of those nights.
ON PREPARATIONS FOR DONCASTER ON SUNDAY…
GA: We’re in on Wednesday morning to make sure we do the right things after the exertions this evening. We’ll make sure the lads who didn’t play have a bit of a blow-out and are ready to come into the team at any time. We will then build up preparing for the derby game. We’re looking forward to it. We’re hurting a little bit after the Blackburn defeat because we know we did enough to take something from the game, but we know how cruel football can be and it’s happened to us on the other side. This group of players has shown they have a fantastic mentality over the last year or so, and I expect the same again.
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