Doncaster boss Gary McSheffrey takes positives from Cambridge defeat

Posted Wednesday, January 19, 2022 by PA

Gary McSheffrey rued Doncaster’s missed opportunities as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at Cambridge.

The away side had missed a host of chances by the time Harvey Knibbs scored against the run of play for Cambridge on the stroke of half-time.

Harrison Dunk doubled the lead with his first goal since May 2016, and despite Joe Dodoo’s goal for Doncaster, the U’s sealed the points at the death through Sam Smith.

Mark Bonner’s side climbed to 13th in Sky Bet League One with the three points, while bottom side Doncaster remain 11 points from safety.

“I thought we played really well,” McSheffrey said. “I thought we mixed the game up quite well, we turned them, created lots of chances. I don’t think Cambridge could have argued if we went in 5-1 up at half-time, but you’ve got to take your chances.

“I’m focused on the positives in there. Cambridge probably wouldn’t have had a team come here and play them off the park first half like we did today.

“I said to the lads that if you lose a game of football, it’s the manner of how you do it.

“The last two games you can keep your head up because you’ve done it in a manner that the fans can see that you’re having a go and you’re creating. I can see that, I can’t ask much more of them.

“It’s just game management and trying to nip some individual errors in the bud. That will come.

“We’ve worked our socks off. I think that’s the best we’ve played by a mile. We were three up at Morecambe but we played a lot better than that today.”

Bonner was delighted to see the U’s beat Rovers despite not being at their best.

“It’s a massive result,” he said. “Any time you can get consecutive wins in the league when you’re in a position of a team like us is a big, big thing.

“Anyone who turns up thinking we can beat anyone because of their position in their league is absolutely mistaken.

“We are challenged to fight every single game in this league. We’ve got to show we can keep competing, we’ve got to grind it out every three or four days at the moment.

“Any time we can take a positive result is an excellent night. You can always take things from it that you want to do better, but if you offered me a brilliant performance with no points or a fairly average game where you take all three, it’s obvious.

“There’s an unbelievable resilience and work ethic to the team. We should absolutely cherish that we’ve got a team like that.”