Gary Caldwell delighted as Exeter pick up first home win since November

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2023 by PA

Exeter manager Gary Caldwell hailed a complete team performance as his side picked up their first home win in Sky Bet League One since November by beating Cambridge 2-0 at St James Park.

Archie Collins’ back-post header gave the Grecians a first-half lead and experienced midfielder Kevin McDonald added a second with a delightful curled shot into the bottom corner from 20 yards 10 minutes after the break.

McDonald, who signed for the Grecians in January, was on the scoresheet for the first time since undergoing a kidney transplant in May 2021, when he received a donation from brother Fraser.

“It was a good day at the office and a good day to win,” Caldwell said. “I just said to the players that when you haven’t won in four games, we understand football and know how important it is to win, there is a bit of pressure on them, but I thought they handled that really well.

“They focused on the process and focused on the performance and performed extremely well. We won fairly comfortably and I think, if anything, we could have scored more goals.

“I was really pleased with how they took the work we had done in the week into the game. It is the first time since I have been here that I really felt they took that work into the game and there was a real focus on what we did and how we would go about winning a football match.

“The first goal was fantastic because we had been working on it all week and I was delighted with Archie’s intent to get in there and want to score the goal. The whole week was about getting bodies in the box and it was a great delivery as well from Pierce Sweeney.”

City dominated pretty much from start to finish and Cambridge managed just one shot on target.

United manager Mark Bonner said: “I thought we started the game well and took a bit of control in the game. And then once they got beyond that we couldn’t contain the outside centre halves.

“I was quite pleased with how we started both halves but we have got to do more to stop the cross from Sweeney in the first half and then we get done at the back post.

“Then, in the second half, I thought we started that half quite on top and there is nothing really in it, and then we don’t track the outside centre half again who delivers a ball and we get beat too easily and the lad McDonald shoots too easy from outside the box.

“From that point on, we didn’t carry enough of a threat. We scored a good goal that is half a millimetre offside just before half-time. But we weren’t able to penetrate enough.

“So the biggest problems in the game for us was our pressing intensity wasn’t at the same level as theirs, and we weren’t able to block the spaces between us often enough, and with the ball we were really poor. As the game went on, the worse we were.”