JUST IN: ‘A really strong performance in all parts’ – Town manager on Plymouth triumph
McKenna: A Really Solid Performance in All Phases
Town boss Kieran McKenna felt the Blues display as they defeated Plymouth Argyle 2-0 at Home Park to return to second in the Championship was a “solid performance in all phases”.
An Brendan Galloway own goal and Kieffer Moore’s fifth for the club since re-signing on loan in January saw Town to five wins on the trot in the Championship for the first time since 2003.
“A really solid performance in all phases,” McKenna said. “I thought our organisation was good, our discipline was good, we were really competitive, came out on top of more than our fair share of challenges and gave ourselves a really good foothold in the game in the first half.
“We knew it was difficult, we knew we were going to have to stand up to a really strong home atmosphere and we had to stand up in difficult conditions, weather and pitch-wise.
“But we did that really well and that gave us a really good platform at half-time to know that we would and we could really push on in the second half if we kept doing the right things, kept limiting their threats.
“We knew the chances would come our way, we managed to take a couple and deliver a really good second-half performance.
“We probably haven’t had too many games like today. It was quite stop-start, I thought Plymouth played quite closed with all their kicks and stuff like that.
“We always back our fitness, back our style to come out in the game at some point. It wasn’t easy to bring it out in the first half, although we still had a couple of good build-ups through the pitch but it wasn’t easy to get control or rhythm in the game.
“But usually we’ll find a period at some point in the game and we really felt confident at half-time that that would come in the second half and we managed to do that.
“Of course, the goal takes a really good deflection, but I thought up until that point we were really starting to put pressure on the penalty area on their goal and it felt like the goal was coming.”
Reflecting further on the second half, he added: “It was hard to get rhythm in the game, for sure. There were lots of stoppages, lots of free-kicks, some of them rightly so, some of them a little bit soft.
“The opposition were setting up a lot of things longer as well when there were goal-kicks and stoppages, so that takes longer when the other team’s stopping play, so it was a really broken first half.
“Today, in conditions like this, that wasn’t a big issue because we felt like the game would settle and a big priority was being really solid in the early bits of the game and giving ourselves a good platform.
“We prefer when they game’s open and we can get rhythm to it but it’s not always going to be that way and sometimes there are things you can do better and sometimes it’s the opposition and sometimes it’s just the flow of the game.
