Luke Varney earns manager praise after netting Cheltenham winner

Posted Sunday, February 24, 2019 by PA

Cheltenham boss Michael Duff praised veteran striker Luke Varney after his 10th goal of the season secured a 1-0 home win over Port Vale.

The result took the Robins 11 points clear of the drop zone, but left Vale 22nd and deeper in relegation trouble.

“It was a good finish and every week we end up talking about him because he deserves every bit of credit he gets,” Duff said.

“He’s been a good player throughout his career and he’s a good player now at 36, but it’s everything else for me that makes him the complete package.

“He’s a great influence on the younger lads, who can learn off him from the way he is around the training ground.

“It’s his hunger for the game, not the money, it’s pure love of the game.

“Sometimes younger lads get obsessed with the money, the watches, the women the cars, everything else but the football.

“If you do the football everything else comes, so he is a great example.

“You can see from the way he plays how much he loves the game.”

Varney struck in the 34th minute, reaching a low corner from Chris Hussey on the right and finding the bottom-right corner.

Vale boss John Askey felt his side improved in the second half, without finding any serious goal threat.

“I thought first half we struggled,” he said.

“We scored a perfectly good goal, which was disallowed and that changed the game.

“Their goal has come from a set piece. We came in at half-time and discussed what was going on.

“We stopped them having as much of the ball and it became quite an even game.

“It was just frustrating really as we were trying to get the ball out wide and crosses into the box, but it never really happened today.

“There was very little in the game, but we didn’t have enough and we ended up with about five forwards on the pitch, but we need to do more.”

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