Greg Abbott On Another Three Points

Last updated : 01 September 2007 By Thetashkentterror

Greg Abbott
United caretaker manager Greg Abbott spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's Derek Lacey on Saturday evening as he talked about the last minute 1-0 victory at home to Cheltenham this afternoon, Abbott talking about the amount of character his side showed :


" In the first-half we were desperately disappointing, we never got a head of steam up or passed the ball. We made wrong decisions, we never got in their faces, we never pressed the game high enough, we never got any attacking momentum and we had, let's say, a very heated half-time conversation. It was mostly one way, my way and Dennis (Booth's) way. Then I think the players came out in the second-half and definitely improved.

" I knew they would make it awkward, they got nine or ten men behind the ball at times, certainly nine leaving one upfront and it was hard to break down. We are trying to play a passing game, we are trying to get the midfield man free in midfield and it didn't work so we changed it to a 4-4-2 to get some width. Fifteen minutes before half-time I thought that it was starting to show a little bit of something and then in the second-half I think that with our honesty, determination and willingness to go and win a football game.

" I think that we tried to go to win the football game and it has paid dividends in the end. I've no embarrassment about winning 1-0 at home in the last minute, absolutely not because I thought that we tried to win the game. My defenders were magnificent, Danny Livesey, David Raven - I don't know what he has done at the minute because all I can see is a big massive bandage. "



" Ziggy (Zigor Aranalde), Arni (Paul Arnison) has come on, Arni was terrific - what a character, what determination he has shown and what a tremendous 45 minute performance. I raced on after the game to congratulate him on his involvement in our game because I thought that he was brilliant. He's set the stall out to get that adrenaline and that forward momentum going and hats off to him.

" He (Harry Worley) has had a tough week, he travelled up, he played at Portsmouth on Wednesday night so he has travelled all the way up to Carlisle. He didn't train on Thursday and only trained with us yesterday, he got booked, he made a challenge where I thought he might be running the risk of getting sent off so it's an education for him as well. We felt that we had to make the change to make sure that we didn't go down to ten men.

" That's what I hope this football club is going to be all about, we know where we are in terms of players, we haven't got masses of funds to bring in top, top drawer players. What we are going to do though is be honest, collective, have a great team spirit, a will to win and all those sort of words. I want everybody to feel a part of that and they have done today. Certainly the players on the pitch there have gone out and done us proud and ground out a win where we know we can do better, but 1-0, I'm absolutely ecstatic for them for getting a result.

" We deserved to win because we kept going for the victory, we kept trying to cause them problems, we kept pushing men forward, we kept putting the ball into wide areas and we kept getting crosses into the box. Eventually something is going to drop for you and we had a couple of half-chances where we might have got something and all I can say to my players is well done. A big pat on the back for the determination rather than sheer purist football if you like. "



" I haven't even looked at the table, I'm not interested in the table really, I hope the fans are and I hope that the fans wake up tomorrow morning and are pleased with that. They know and I know that we have a lot to do, we have to improve on that, we want to get more consistent performances and I'm not going to hide behind anything. I'm not going to hide behind a 1-0 result, we want to do better over 90 minutes, we want players to perform better.

" We want that second-half momentum to be there right from the start so that we can blow teams away when they come to Brunton Park and I can relax for half a game rather than being right uptight right the way to the wire. Anybody can see that the players are right behind us, I want everybody behind us and again I keep saying about the fans. We needed the fans today because the players weren't doing it in the first-half, it's hard to change. I think they tried to lift us, there were a couple of chants we got there just before half-time.

" In the second-half they got right behind us, they knew that it wasn't pure football, we're not going to make any apologies for that. I'm not going to make any excuses but them then getting behind their team and urging the ball, they have literally blown it in the net for us. Like I said we're going to need them when we're winning 3-0 fair enough, but we need them more when it's 0-0 and things are as tricky and as tight as they were today.

" After his pass in the first-half he (Danny Livesey) was lucky to be on the pitch in the second-half as well. Character, what a character, you know what you are going to get and he's improving as a player. He's doing it at one end and then he's doing it again at the other, as long as the clean sheets are nil I won't expect Danny to be up there with 20 goals at the end of the season. I enjoyed his one today just as much as he did though. "