Manager Robbie Stockdale on Dale’s goalless draw with Salford City…
“Maybe I need to do my half-time team talk before the game, that might help, eh!” said the Gaffer.
“We constantly wonder how to improve that [the way we start the game]. Again, we’ve got a very young team with inexperienced players and maybe it just takes them a while to work themselves into the game but that’s no excuse for not going the hard yards, if you like.
“So when you’re not doing well with the ball, make it really difficult to play against you, and I just didn’t feel that we did that in the first half. Again, we just tweaked a couple of things [at half-time]. The shape isn’t an issue in the game when you see the second half performance, so we just make sure that we do it better.”
On the clean sheet Stockdale continued: “Clean sheets are paramount to me. People might see that as a negative as we want to score goals but it gives you a great platform in the game and you can see right at the end there that we’re having shots and chances so one goal could have nicked the three points for us. I think, overall, we probably didn’t deserve to win the game, but I thought with our endeavour we certainly deserved the draw.”
And the Boss added: “Joel Coleman made some really big saves and kept us in the game in the first half, but in the second half I was really pleased with how we stood up to the physical challenge. They [Salford] are putting balls in our box, and Jeriel, Sam and Eoghan were superb in dealing with that.
“It’s a point on the road again. I’ve just told the players that’s a steady start to the week and we need to now take it into a home game on Saturday. There will be a bit of expectation on us but we have to handle that and play well to pick up three points there and then we can say that we’ve had a good week.”
Watch the Gaffer’s interview in full on the club’s YouTube channel.