“It was a certainly a barnstorming ending”, Micky pleased with his players in 2-1 Tranmere win
Town played their first home league game of the season and left it late to take the 3 points with two goals near the 90 minute mark.Tranmere grabbed the lead in the first half and made Town work for every ball during the game.
With 10 minutes of the game remaining Micky Mellon changed his front line and minutes later Andy Mangan drew Town level, and minutes later his ball set-up Mickey Demetriou up to slot home a late, late winner.
After the game Town manager Micky Mellon spoke to the press and was pleased with his team’s performance over the 90 minutes:”It was a certainly a barnstorming ending but one thing I want to make sure I get out there today is that I really love Tranmere as a football club I had a terrific time there, but no way today did we not deserve to come away without a victory.
“We know that at times a lot of teams will come and set-up like Tranmere did against us, but we had to be patient, keeping knocking on the door and know that we have got a decent bench and the lads today have come on and delivered for us.
“I don’t think anyone could say today that we did not deserve the victory.”
An injury to Mark Ellis saw Mellon shuffle his pack and bring in summer signing Mickey Demetriou to make his Football League debut. A performance that saw him pick up both man of the match awards was topped off with a great winning goal:”I’m delighted for him, the three lads Mickey, Andy Mangan and big Jean-Louis Akpa Akpro we trained them really hard on Thursday.
“I said to them that one of you three could be a hero on Saturday so make sure that we train properly and make sure we are game ready when the opportunities come.
“Things like today happen in football and that is one of the reasons that we make sure everyone is game ready.
“I’m delighted for them and it was a deserved victory even if people will see that it was in the last minutes, we were knocking at the door for a long time.”
The difference in the Town squad this season is the strength and the depth of the squad with options all over the team and the bench for the manager:”It’s about the strength of character in the group as well, yes we have got good players but we do have a real gutsiness about us and we want to win games of football and that showed today.
“Yes there are areas we want to get better in, we need to be a bit cute in the final third, a bit more slick and at times today we maybe weren’t as good there as we have been recently.
“We never lost our way, we never started just launching things, we played with a purpose and hit the diags in to get behind them.”
The one negative of the game was the manner of the Tranmere goal where Town had several chances to deal with the ball but couldn’t clear their lines:”It was poor, from a throw in that’s just been thrown up the line we’ve got to defend those types of things better.
“We can’t be giving away goals like that at the time we did today, teams will set-up like Tranmere did today but we’ve not got to help them.
“Credit to Tranmere as they battled and battled away but we felt that if we kept knocking at the door we would get the result.”
The late turn around in the result will give the Town squad even more belief but Micky is far from getting carried away with things:”It gives us another 3 points but we won’t get carried away as there is a lot of stuff we want to get better.
“There are lots that we are happy with, the way we moved the ball around in the first half was terrific and to come in at half-time behind we couldn’t believe it.
“We never got frustrated and we stuck to the way that we have been training and we never lost our self belief.”
The games are coming thick and fast and the focus now turns to the visit of Accrington Stanley on Tuesday night and another tough test for Town:”We won’t get carried away we’ve got a tough game against Accrington on Tuesday night and I doubt they will set-up much differently than Tranmere did today.
“We are doing terrific, we just need to keep winning games of football, I’m not going to say we need to do this and we need to do that.
“We are just going to keep on the process of making the players better and making the team better and if we do that the results will come.