Assistant Manager Chris Beech has been reflecting on last weekend’s 1-1 draw with Bristol City, as well as looking ahead to Saturday’s visit of Bradford City, in his latest Dale Player interview.
He told the club’s official website: “It was a great game and the energy was unbelievable from both teams. Bristol City are a massive club and the differences in finances and facilities are incredible. Their Manager was very open after the game in telling us how much they’ve invested in the pitch and in the stadium, and it just blows you away.
“To go against them and be a little bit unfortunate not to take all three points was excellent. That’s gone, though, and the fact is that it’s value is one point.
“We’ve now got Bradford at home, who played great the other day against Leeds United and they’ll be looking to continue their good start to the season.
“But if we do what we need to do, and do it to the best of our abilities, then it’ll be a real good game. I’m confident that if we can do what we’ve been doing of late - our dynamic movement and our penetration with and without the ball - then we’ll give anybody a game, like we did last Saturday against Bristol City.”
Beech says he is pleased with the continued improvement seen from the players since the start of the season.
“We’ve played well in the games we’ve lost and I feel as though the players have adapted quite quickly to League One.
“It’s a high standard division and we want to be competitive in it. We want to be successful within it, even under our financial constraints. It makes me and Keith have to be more creative, we think harder to get our yard and we train as hard as we can to be tactically on our front foot because we want to help our players gain the three points.
"It's a great environment at the moment. It’s a great positive working environment and the players are confident - they’re enjoying these League One challenges.”
And he thanked fans for their support last weekend.
“I talked last week about forgiveness because we are looking at fighting a financial gulf and how we need our supporters, especially at home, to continue to get behind us, and I thought they were great on Saturday.
It was great that we had that support after conceding. We’re looking for that support again on Saturday and we’re looking for the players to progress their performance and go a step further by getting the three points.”