Matt Gray salutes Sutton for ‘digging in’ to secure overdue win against Bradford

Posted Sunday, October 29, 2023 by PA

Matt Gray hailed his Sutton side’s character after overseeing a late 2-1 win over managerless Bradford.

Josh Coley put the hosts ahead after four minutes before Andy Cook levelled just before the hour mark.

And after weathering a Bantams storm, Harry Beautyman won it in the 87th minute with his first Sky Bet League Two goal since the opening day.

Victory ended a three-game losing streak for the EFL’s bottom club.

Gray said: “We’re delighted to win. I thought the other two performances over the past seven days were better.

“But I can’t fault the shift or the effort one bit. We pulled into this car park at 3.30am on Wednesday morning, so to go out, stick together, dig in and show great character I’m really pleased.

“We rode our luck to be fair. I think we needed that little bit of luck with Cooky hitting the bar at a crucial time.

“We just weathered the storm and came out after their goal and I was delighted for Harry to get the goal.

“We got off to a really good start, we were on the front foot and it was a really good, calm finish.

“I was really pleased with our play for 20 or 25 minutes, but it was a half of two halves really.

“It was disappointing to concede from a corner, but we stuck together. We grew back into the half.

“It was a great cross and a great header from Harry to win it.”

Bantams caretaker player-manager Kevin McDonald saw his side slump to a painful second successive away defeat.

He said: “We were poor in the first half. We didn’t create enough chances or play with enough pace in our attack.

“We gave it away sloppily in the final third at times and we deserved to go in at half-time 1-0 down.

“We tweaked a couple of things that we knew would give us joy and it did.

“Unfortunately, we’re on top and create a few good chances to win the game. But that seems to be the case, we don’t seem to be scoring too many goals at the minute.

“Then we concede a suckerpunch at the end there and that’s a blow.

“We needed to score when we were on top. When you’re dominating, creating chances and are on the attack you have to score, but that’s not happened for a good few weeks.

“We need to score goals; it’s not the individuals but we need to score.

“At 1-1 we’re in the ascendency and if we score we win that game and then it turns into a difficult result.”