Simmo Reacts To Rushden and Diamonds Win

Last updated : 07 December 2005 By Thetashkentterror
Simmo speaks
United player-manager Paul Simpson spoke exclusively to BBC Radio Cumbria yesterday evening as he gave his thoughts on the 4-0 away thrashing of Rushden and Diamonds that gets the Blues back to winning ways :



" That was everything that we could have asked for to be honest with you. I didn’t think our performance was really that good. I thought we went ahead against the run of play but we say to the players that if you don’t put balls into the box and if you don’t get players reacting then you don’t get your reward.

" That’s what happened tonight though. We’ve put it in there, the keeper makes a mistake and Derek Holmes is on hand to go and tap it in. It might look an ugly goal but we’ll settle for ugly goals all season if that’s what it has to be.

" I think once we got that goal we then tended to settle down a little bit, passed it a little bit better and I thought we thoroughly deserved to win. 4-0 isn’t a result that flatters us and we’re delighted with it.

" We’ve said it all season that the foundation for us has to be to work hard to keep clean sheets and that’s what we’ve done tonight. We’ve set out with a team tonight that we felt could cause them problems and that’s what has happened.

" Although we’ve had to defend for periods of the game, particularly early on, Keiren (Westwood) has been there to make saves and all goalkeepers want to be doing things. If they’re not savings shots they always come out and think they can do something and normally make a mess of it.



" So he’s been called upon to do his bit tonight and he’s made good saves in the first and second half. The two centre-halves (Kevin Gray and Danny Livesey) were strong and have had to go and fight their strikers and the two full-backs have done a good job.

" All-in-all it was a really good performance and we are delighted with the three points and it really does set it up nicely for another tough game on Saturday.

" We can’t ask any more of the strikers, if they are scoring goals then they are doing their job. Karl (Hawley) is working hard, Derek Holmes works hard and Michael Bridges, although he didn’t have the best of times on the left-hand side - he’s gone down the middle and scored. It was good link-up play for all the goals with the strikers and they’ll be happy, and again, it gives me a nice problem.

" The test for us now is picking the right side for Peterborough. I felt as though we needed to just freshen it up a little bit. Simon Hackney and Raphael Nade have done a job for us over a period, I think they have had a run of ten games but I felt it was necessary to give them both a little break and they can come out if it.

" Now is the tester for them though. Can they get their heads up and pick themselves up because they will be low even though we have won the game. They will have wanted to be involved in it and now it’s a tester for them to see how they are going to react to it – what part are they going to play for the squad? – because Saturday might be a different team, and it’s between now and then that we have to make that decision.



" Brendan (McGill) always works his socks off for you all the time. At the end I bet they wanted to throttle him when he kept holding it in the corner and knocking it against their legs and getting a corner.

" He works up and down. I felt their strengths in their side are the left-back (Andy) Burgess, who is actually a left-sided midfield player, and I thought Brendan would give him more problems making him go and defend the other side and it worked.

" The other dangerous player for them is (David) Bell on the right-hand side and I thought we coped very, very well against them and hopefully we’ll continue that way on Saturday.

" We couldn’t have asked for any more tonight. This one has gone now and we get ourselves ready for the next one and we need to see how a few of the lads are. Paul Arnison was a little bit tight in his calves again towards the end.

" Chris Lumsdon had a bit of concussion from getting a whack on his head when he scored the goal so we need to just check how everybody is and hopefully they will all declare themselves fit for the weekend and give me another headache. "