Brian Barry-Murphy impressed with effort as Rochdale win at Shrewsbury

Posted Sunday, October 25, 2020 by PA

Rochdale manager Brian Barry-Murphy was impressed with this side’s effort after securing a 2-1 win at Shrewsbury.

First-half goals from Oliver Rathbone and Alex Newby set Rochdale on their way to three more away points following their midweek triumph at Burton.

Aaron Pierre reduced the deficit for Shrewsbury on the stroke of half time, but Rochdale stood firm to come out on top, with goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu making a fine late save from Marlon Fossey’s header.

Barry-Murphy said: “It felt very exciting I suppose because we were under so much pressure towards the end of the game.

“You think that was hard, but I thought for long spells of the game we were brilliant and, particularly in the first half, I thought we looked really dangerous every time we went forward.

“I was very pleased for Alex Newby to get his first goal and Ollie Rathbone because they’re the guys that we really expect to start scoring goals to complement Mattie Lund’s goal earlier in the week, so there was huge satisfaction in a lot of areas for us today.”

Barry-Murphy highlighted the contribution of some of the younger members of his team as Bazunu, Haydon Roberts, Tolaji Bola and Aaron Morley all played their part in sealing the victory.

He added: “When we were coming here today, the shape of our squad is obviously very small, but looking at our team, Bazunu, 18, Haydon, 18, Tolaji, 21. Aaron Morley is almost like, do we think he’s 30 or 31, but he’s only actually 20, so we’re a very young team.”

Shrewsbury manager Sam Ricketts, whose side have lost back-to-back home games, said: “It’s a real hard one to sum up at the minute. Again, it’s a game we’ve dominated, and we’re not dominating possession playing out of our own box, we’re dominating possession generally in the opposition’s half.

“Twenty odd attempts at goal with only one (scored) is a problem, we need to be scoring more than that, but we’re giving teams cheap goals as well. We have to be real careful on that because 98 per cent of the performance is very, very good.

“It’s just that little bit in probably both boxes, to score a little bit more, and make sure that we keep the score against us at zeros and ones.

“We are going to be a little bit more open than last year, but we’re controlling the ball, so the amounts of attacks we’re having to defend is minimal really.

“We have to persevere with what we’re doing because there isn’t an awful lot wrong. We’re looking a very, very good side in a number of ways.

“But we have to maintain that but also improve it and turn all the possession and all the shots that we had – and we had another 19, 20 shots today and that doesn’t include balls going across the face of goal with no one at the end of.

“We have to persevere with that and keep going and basically in effect turn the screw at both ends.”