Neil Critchley proud of Blackpool as they maintain winning away run - 7M sport

Neil Critchley proud of Blackpool as they maintain winning away run



Posted Sunday, March 21, 2021 by PA

Neil Critchley proud of Blackpool as they maintain winning away run

Blackpool boss Neil Critchley was proud of his team after they made it four straight away wins with a 2-0 victory at Oxford.

First-half goals from Kenny Dougall and Dan Ballard secured the points, with both goals coming from corners.

Critchley said: “I thought we had all the facets of our game together. Our defensive organisation was added to with some really good moments of football – and goals.

“I thought we gave a really good team lots of problems.

“The only criticism I could have is that we’ve not scored one or two more goals in the second half and put even more of a gloss on the victory.

“But I can’t praise the players enough – I was really proud of that performance.

“We’ve been working on our set pieces for a number of weeks now and it’s something we have highlighted, that we need to get more goals from those situations.

“I thought we started the game very well, we were on top, and we said we need to score now we’re in the ascendancy.

“We’ve probably been guilty of not doing that in our previous games, and today we’ve done that. Jordan Thorniley kept the ball alive and I couldn’t quite see Kenny Dougall score because there were lots of bodies in there.

“And then Danny Ballard produced a terrific header.

“He’s had one earlier cleared off the line. It was brilliant to see a centre-back climb above somebody and produce a really powerful header and I didn’t think it was anything we didn’t deserve at that moment in the game.

“There were some very good individual performances from us.

“The way we set up, we caused them a few problems in the middle of the pitch, we forced them to make a change and a change of shape.

“From that the game opened up, and you’d expect them to have some chances in the second half but we had the clearer opportunities on the counter-attack, and if we’d have scored one of those chances and gone 3-0 up the game would have been completely over.

“The three points was nothing less than we deserved.”

Oxford boss Karl Robinson said: “It was two good, strong teams with nothing between them and we’ve been done by two set plays.

“I thought our set-play delivery was abysmal, and theirs was terrific.

“We knew they were going to press up so we said to our players before the start ‘don’t play backwards’, yet that’s exactly what we did.

“We didn’t do the basics. We were so naive.

“The effort was there but there were so many under-performances in our team.

“How we can go from being so good last Tuesday night to being so under-par today amazes me.

“People ask about fatigue – it wasn’t fatigue.

“We didn’t do the basics right in terms of getting caught in a press and not playing beyond their back line, and then we’ve been done on two set plays – not through structural mistakes but personnel mistakes.

“We were just not quite at it. And yet we created three or four good chances in the first half.

“But the emotional roller-coaster continues…and I’ve now got to pick the players up for Tuesday night at Northampton which is our game in hand on other clubs – and we want to make sure we take advantage of that.”

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