Reaction From Crawley Boss Richie Barker

Last updated : 30 September 2012 By Thetashkentterror

Town manager Richie Barker spoke to BBC Radio Sussex and his club's official website after his side's 2-0 League One win over Carlisle at Brunton Park, Barker saying three points certainly helped ahead of a long journey home:

 

"The away form is not looking bad at the minute and you don't get much further than this, so it certainly helps with the journey on the way home, that is for certain. One of the last things that I said to the players was that it was a hell of a journey up so let's try to make it as enjoyable for ourselves as we can. I can't believe 144 people came up, a massive, massive thank you to all of them and I hope they enjoyed their day. It wasn't the most entertaining game but I am sure they have enjoyed going home with the three points.

"Sometimes you have to win games in all different ways if you are going to be successful and today we won it in a slightly scrappy way. It wasn't the best performance, we didn't play a great deal of football, but to be successful you have to win games when you are not at your best, and today was one of those. The successful teams as well don't go on bad runs, and we are not even ten games in yet but so far we haven't had any majorly bad runs.

"They probably created a few more chances than I would have liked, but we had equal chances I think. So, the gameplan in the second-half was that we were playing up the hill and against the wind, so it was to try to get in behind them a little bit and use Nicky Ajose's pace. We were trying to get down the sides of them and get them running back towards their own goal. I thought we did that pretty well after an initial first ten minutes where we were struggling a little bit to get out, I thought after that we did pretty well.

"It was Nathan Byrne's first start for us and his ever first league goal as well apparently and he took it like a 20 goal a season striker. When he sets off he takes some catching and he was clever when he got his body in front, I was thinking swing your left foot, but luckily enough he knows better than I do and he swung the outside of his right foot. So, it was a good finish and just what we needed at the time.

"I looked up with 25 minutes to go and it was still 1-0 and I thought that the clock was not moving. I looked at it what I thought was 20 minutes later and it was still 24 minutes to go. But, the players are enjoying it, they are enjoying coming in and playing on nice big pitches and expressing themselves and certainly making the journeys back home better."

 

 

"We have not had a lot of luck recently over the last few weeks, and today we rode our luck at times and obviously it was a slightly fortunate second goal. Nicky (Adams) is saying it would have gone in anyway, but you get one or two of those a year and no doubt at some point we will get one against us. But, if you don't shoot you don't score and I thought it was in our best passage of play, so we probably deserved it, and we could have probably have scored four or five as well as them.

"Without being too negative I don't think we can kid ourselves that we defended brilliantly, because they created more chances than I would have liked. But, for the confidence of everybody I thought Paul Jones was excellent, I thought his handling was fantastic today in difficult conditions. I thought his kicking was great as well so he deserved a clean sheet.

"I was also pleased for, I won't say a scrambled together back four, but without Kyle (McFadzean) it was Joe Walsh's first start in the league as well, so two 20-year olds in the back four and I thought they handled themselves pretty well. I thought we defended far too deep in the first-half, but by holding a higher line and Paul Jones trying to get them out and him having a better starting positiion, we had seen how hard it was for us to get behind them in the first-half.

"So, I said to him that if we hold a high enough line and be brave then there is every chance that we can put up with that as well, and to be fair to them they did that. It would be nice if we could build on this though, it would be good if we could start to show people at home what we have done away from home.

"I think there are various reasons for it at the minute, I think when we play away from home teams come and attack us a little bit and leave space, and we have got legs in the team. But, it was a nice big pitch out there today and we made the best of it at times, although probably didn't play as much football as I would have liked."