Rotherham loanee Jerry Yates scored his first league goal for the Blues on Tuesday night when he expertly headed home a whipped McCarron delivery to earn United a point against Notts County.
Speaking about the header, he told us: “I was pleased with what I did but I honestly would have preferred three points to scoring a goal or seeing a lot of the ball.
“The goal has been a long time coming and it’s about time I got one of those. It’s nice to get it, because it’s my first league goal for the club, and it doesn’t really matter how it goes in.
“It was a great ball from Liam McCarron and it’s one of those where you make the run and hope that it comes in.”
“What a ball it was, to be fair to him, and he’s come on leaps and bounds since he joined the first team,” he added. “I spoke to him after the game and he’s buzzing that it was his first assist. He’s done that against a strong team, so it has to give him a lot of confidence.
“For myself, I’ve said for a while that I want more goals. That’s part of what I’m here to do, and I’ve been disappointed that I’ve missed a few chances during my time here. All I’ll do is keep working hard for the team and hopefully the goals will come.”
“We were all disappointed with the result,” he added. “We played well, and we should have taken more of our chances, but I think we have to take the positives from it into the game against Lincoln on Saturday.
“A massive part of the disappointment is that we know we dominated the game. We know we’ve got to start being more clinical in the final third because that will make a big difference to the results we’re getting.
“The possession we had was good, and that’s something we’ve worked a lot at in training. If we keep doing that against other teams we’ll definitely win a lot of games. The way we kept going at the end against Notts County I thought we were going to get the second goal as well, but it wasn’t to be.”
Having controlled the game, only to go behind just after he hour mark, he admitted that it would have been easy for heads to drop.
“You do wonder if it’s a case of here we go again when that happens,” he commented. “The good thing is the lads have got a strong mentality and we know we can get something from any game if we keep going.
“I didn’t celebrate much with the equaliser because I felt we could push on and win it. It’s just disappointing that we didn’t score again and get the points we think we deserved.”
With his current loan spell up in January, we wondered if he would be happy to put pen to paper on another deal with the Blues here at Brunton Park.
“I’m very happy here, I’m playing regular football, so why not?” he said. “Obviously I need to speak to Rotherham and other people first, to see what they want me to do, but I am very happy here.
“It’s up to other parties as to when any decision is made, and what they decide, but I’m just happy playing football.”
Next up for United’s is tomorrow’s trip to Lincoln for the second round of this season’s FA Cup competition.
“We know what to expect because they’re a very good team,” he told us. “We need to be ready for it 100%, which we will be, and our aim will be to get through.
“Hopefully that will be the case.”
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