Graham Turner's thoughts after the 2-0 win at Tranmere
Town travelled to high flying Tranmere Rovers for what looked like a tough test for Graham Turner's team. Tranmere were reduced to 10 men after 5 minutes and Town grabbed the lead with a debut goal for Chris Porter. Town continued to keep Tranmere at bay and then grabbed a second goal through Cameron Gayle to go home with an important 3 points.
After the game Town manager Graham Turner spoke to the press to give them his thoughts on the game:”Time will tell how big a three points that will be over the course of the season but it's a massive three points irrespective of the circumstances. Sometimes it's more difficult to play against ten men, especially a decent team like Tranmere but we've kept our shape and our discipline and we've had a number of other chances to increase our lead but you can never tell - there's always a certain edginess. It'd been an excellent performance and an excellent result, irrespective of Tranmere going down to ten men.
The red card was a long way away from where I'm stood at pitch level. From people who have seen replays of it, it's most probably justified. Joe Jacobsen doesn't go down too readily so we've got to assume from the evidence of the replays that it was the right decision.
Chris Porter's contribution has been quite good throughout the course of the game - he's won a few headers, held the ball up and got in behind a couple of times. He's there to score goals and irrespective of the chance that was presented to him he's there on the spot to put it in. He's deadly from that range!!
You have to keep the ball against ten men. I thought that the pitch was tricky, it was obviously cutting up and it takes a little bit of courage when you're down the bottom of the table to have the confidence to pass the ball and we did that and I think when you've got the extra man advantage that is the way to make it pay. Although Tranmere made it difficult for us, they kept working hard and they're a decent side. I've been expecting them to slip up for some time, they've had some bad results recently but you can see why they're up there - they've got some quality in the side but the work-rate and the organisation is as good as anything we've come up against this season.
Our away record hasn't been too bad of late and our defensive record has been quite reasonable. I think that brings our goal difference down to about four, which could be crucial at the end of the season - we hope not and that we'll have pulled well away from the relegation zone and the three points today will have helped us.
We got a bit excited in front of goal with two or three chances, particularly as the second half went on and we should have done better with them.
We only use Cameron Gayle as a dummy (in set-pieces) to make runs and take people away so it was quite a surprise when he's popped up! He's done well for us and it was an opportunistic goal and a sharp little header so we're pleased for him.
Marvin Morgan has had a couple of weeks with this ankle injury and I think he's had a knock on it again and he was just running out of steam a bit because he's not had much training so we just needed some fresh impetus up front and Rodgers gave us that.