Manager Brian Barry-Murphy delivers an honest assessment of Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Doncaster Rovers at the Crown Oil Arena…
Dale led through an Aaron Morley goal but Kieran Sadlier equalised for Rovers in stoppage time.
The draw maintains Rochdale’s unbeaten start to the season, with the side having secured four points from an available six so far.
“It has been a great start to the season for our lads. They have given absolutely everything, and today was no exception,” said BBM in his post-match interview.
“It was a very technical game. There were large parts of it where I thought we performed very, very well. Towards the end of the game, Doncaster threw absolutely everything at us, which was inevitable, and our lads defended with great courage.
“It obviously would have been nice to win the game, but I keep asking them to put everything on the line to try and stop those goals going in and they did that. It’s unfortunate that the player was unmarked, but we move on. We were very happy with how we played but we still want to evolve and get better. We feel as those there are ways we can be better as the game progressed today, and we will be in weeks going forward."
He continued: “We’re very conscious of the type of football supporters want to see and we’re very keen to provide as much excitement as we can. Within that, we believe there are ways we have to play to draw the opposition out and allow us to create opportunities for the players that we have.
“We believe the we play is suited to the players that we’ve got within our dressing room. We’re very conscious of the fact that we want to go forward, be aggressive and try to create chances and goal mouth action. There were spells in today’s game where we kept the ball at the back for the reason of trying to draw Doncaster out and to try to go between them.
“The major thing in the second half that I wanted our team to do was to try and hit Doncaster on the break as they came onto us and provide penetration and create goal scoring opportunities. There were a number of reasons we were unable to do that – Doncaster are a very good team, which we have to respect, and their shape was very good.
“As we evolve and get better, I think we’ll be very, very dangerous when we go in front in games, which I don’t think we were today. I think at 1-0 we looked as though we were going to have to defend really, really well, but we didn’t look like scoring again which is what we want to be doing. We want to be a constant threat.”
Watch the full interview on iFollow.