Assistant Manager Chris Beech has been reflecting on last weekend’s win over Walsall, as well as looking ahead to Saturday’s League One fixture v Chesterfield, in his latest interview…
“It was very good, wasn’t it,” said Beech as he spoke about the 3-0 victory over the Saddlers.
“I know Keith stated in the press that he was really pleased with the lads, especially with how much work we did playing against what were the league leaders at the time.
“To keep a clean sheet and to score three goals, and you could argue that we could have scored more, is really pleasing. I’m also pleased for the travelling supporters who saw us play as well as we did."
Calvin Andrew scored a brace in the win and was named in the Football League’s Team of the Week after his impressive performance. Beech admits that he was pleased to see him find the goals that were deserving of his play.
“He dominated two centre-halves at Scunthorpe and even although he was playing against a different style of centre-half against Walsall, he managed to repeat his performance. We spoke to him before the game and said that he’d have to be even more on the front foot to make sure that he had as much impact on the match at Walsall as he did at Scunthorpe and he was even better. Obviously the only thing he didn’t do at Scunthorpe was back the performance up with goals but he put them in the back of the net at Walsall, and he deserves his accolades.
“Calvin's in a great place, he loves playing here and he loves the respect he gets in and around the squad and from ourselves. He definitely tries to reciprocate the message that we give him every day in terms of games and putting it down when it’s most important, so I was really pleased for Calvin.”
Rochdale host Chesterfield this Saturday, the first home game of 2016. And while Dale can boast of the excellent 3-0 win over the Saddlers, the Spireites recorded a resounding 7-1 win over Shrewsbury Town in their last outing.
And Beech is expecting a difficult encounter.
“It was three points [against Walsall], but it has been and gone now.
“We’re playing against a team this weekend that have had an emphatic win, beating Shrewsbury 7-1. We saw out here against Shrewsbury when we went 3-0 up and they got back into the game that they had some good players and played some good football.
"Chesterfield have backed it up by a previous draw against Coventry, so they’ve started very well under the new manager. He [Danny Wilson] is a very experienced manager and I’m sure they’ll be doing their home-work on us. But we’re really looking forward to playing them here at home.
“What’s in front of us is a team that’s looking to get on the up. We know we’re going to have to be at our best and we’ll look to progress this week to make sure we beat for Saturday. We’ll have the lads out there giving everything they’ve got.”
The full interview is on Dale PlayerHD.