Michael Duff wants Cheltenham to show more confidence on the ball

Posted Wednesday, April 21, 2021 by PA

Cheltenham boss Michael Duff has urged his players to trust in each other more after they kept their title push alive with a hard-fought 1-0 win over Stevenage.

George Lloyd’s superb first-half finish proved enough to seal all three points for the visitors at the Lamex Stadium despite being forced to defend for much of the second half.

Lloyd calmly beat Jamie Cumming for his second League Two goal of the campaign in the 43rd minute after expertly bringing down a ball from Conor Thomas with his chest.

And while Duff was delighted with the way his players held their nerve as Stevenage searched for an equaliser, he wants to see his team be more confident in their remaining games.

“I knew it’d be tight and not a lot in the game,” said Duff. “I thought it might be a ‘one-nil-er’ to either side. It panned out as a really difficult game.

“We were good in the first half but didn’t start the second half particularly well. Because we are so good at seeing games out, it becomes almost like a default position, seeing games out.

“We need to be better with the ball than that. Where we are in the league (second), they need to be more confident with it and trust each other a little bit more.

“Defensively we were excellent and first half I thought we were quite good as well. I am delighted for Lloydy (George Lloyd). He’s worked hard for that and I thought he was excellent.

“He has been all season. It’s just his goal tally hasn’t been what we thought, but hopefully that will come. I think it will as he’s a good player.”

Stevenage substitute Jack Aitchison saw his shot blocked by a lunging Charlie Raglan in the 55th minute but Alex Revell’s men could not find a way through after the break.

“First half we had two one-on-ones that we should have done better with and we had the ball in areas where we should have done a lot more,” said Revell.

“We knew defensively they are very good. We needed to move the ball quicker in the first half, but if we come in at 0-0, they’d probably say we had the better of the chances.

“We have to be better in first halves as second halves we come out and completely dominate. We should be coming away with something from the game, but we missed chances.

“I wish I knew why. We are working hard on sliding centre forwards in and on diagonals and getting runners and getting 10s on the ball to slide and we are seeing it in games.

“For the one-on-ones it’s just a mental block at the minute. Decisions you make you live and die by, and we have to keep working on it.”