Forest Green boss Mark Cooper salutes match-winner Nicky Cadden

Posted Sunday, January 24, 2021 by PA

Forest Green manager Mark Cooper felt match-winner Nicky Cadden was rewarded for his hard work after his goal earned a 1-0 win at Leyton Orient.

Cadden’s strike ensured Rovers ended a run of four matches without a win and climbed back into the automatic promotion places in League Two.

Orient’s cause was not helped by the dismissal of Dan Happe after 64 minutes for two yellow cards.

“We had a couple of days to work on our shape ahead of the game and Nicky Cadden worked exceptionally hard and was rewarded with his goal, also setting up another couple of good opportunities,” said Cooper.

“We had an approach that we wanted to use after Tuesday and I think you could see by our team selection we tried to be a bit more sturdy without losing too much flair.

“That is no slight on the players that I left out, who have been magnificent for us, but I had to pick a team that I felt could give us a platform to play at a place that is difficult to come to against a team who are in good form, so full credit to everyone involved.

“I thought we were really good today. I thought we created a lot of chances against a really good team and we could have won by more in the end.”

The result was a blow to Orient’s hopes of improving their own promotion prospects after they had won seven of their last eight games at home in the league.

Boss Ross Embleton said: “It was a frustrating afternoon and we didn’t quite hit the levels we wanted to.

“But it is right to say that I think we need to realise we are human beings and we do have off days sometimes. At the moment I feel like we look like a really good team when we win, but when we don’t we are not anywhere near where we need to be.

“So we need to try and bring that gap closer for consistency in our performances.

“I haven’t seen the goal back but we looked overloaded and did not deal well enough and it looked that it was a poor goal to concede, so I am disappointed.

“I won’t point to the officials as the reason we got beat today as we under-performed, but it would have helped make margins up for example when we got into the position Connor Wilkinson did in the first half and goes down but we didn’t get the penalty.”