Assistant Manager Chris Beech has been reflecting on Monday night’s FA Cup tie v Stoke City, as well as looking ahead to Saturday’s League One fixture v Coventry City...
“Football League teams have done ever so well in their performances in the FA Cup this season. We were part of that but we couldn’t turn our opportunity into what everyone was hoping for, however, first half we really took our game to Stoke and we definitely had them rattled.
“The staff and the players were rattled but we couldn’t score that goal at the right time to give them the punch that would really hurt.
“Stoke were really professional in the way they went about their work and the weekend had probably highlighted the negatives of the FA Cup from the Stoke perspective in terms of the results that had gone on. All it did was make sure that they knew that they were in for a game and do the best to stay in that game.”
He continued: “The Stoke game has gone now and Coventry are our next opponents.
“It’ll be great to get on the coach on Saturday morning fully prepared, and after getting to the ground, seeing what we can do against excellent players at an unbelievable stadium, although I know they’ve had issues with the pitch.
“There’s no easy ride at all [in this league]. You can’t get too far in front of yourselves because we know how League One punishes you when you’re not at full tilt.
“League One standard is very good and it’s very competitive. It’s far different to League Two and as we look to go against any opponent we’ve got to make sure that we’re very respectful. At the same time we’re confident in what we do but we’ll have to make sure that we turn up for work.”
The full interview is available to view on Dale Player.