Manager Nathan Haslam gave his thoughts after two stoppage time goals earned Whitley a point in last night’s game at Thornaby.
“I think we dominated possession for most of the game but we were struggling to convert that possession into meaningful chances in the final third and when the chances have come we were a bit toothless so for 90 minutes we haven’t scored. With four minutes injury time we’ve galvanised and found something within each other and I think the goal that Robbo took was really composed. Then they kind of said “Come on we can do this!” and fair play to Connor Smith, I don’t know how he’s wriggled out of that corner with three men round him but it was a great quality ball in and Macca’s finished it – two all!”
“Goals change games and I was adamant, and Callum was adamant that it wasn’t a penalty. He did go to ground but Callum was nowhere near him. The ref’s given it and it’s changed the complexion of the game. So then we were pushing for a goal which left us wide open and they scored the second one so as I say, goals change games. I think if we’d have scored in the first half it would have been a very, very different game, but we need to find that edge where we can score and can put teams to the sword like we did at RCA. That was a while back now; we need to do that on a consistent basis, so it’s the final third where we need improvement.”
Regarding the thinking behind the substitutions, he explained “In the first half we were ok across the back and ok in the midfield but not good enough up top. The runs were poor, there were some really bad decisions and we needed more, so we went a bit more direct with Macca coming on, but obviously with Spooner getting injured we had to change things around a little bit, there was nothing we could do about that, but we wanted to get Connor Smith further forward and I think I can safely say the way the game panned out it was the right decision. Doyle was the right fit when Spooner went off, we’d wanted to get Martindale on and get some minutes into him. He was going to be our third substitution but obviously going like it did we needed another midfielder and Doyle was the right fit for that.”
On the subject of team selection he added “To be in this team you’ve got to be fit, you’ve got to have the legs, you’ve got to be able to press teams. It’s about work rate and you’ve got to be able to compete and the lads have done that tonight.”
