Three goals in two games is just what the doctor ordered for Carlisle United and for forward Ozzy Zanzala, who has had to be patient since joining the club back in January, it was nothing more than he deserved following an excellent week on an individual level.
Speaking about the explosion seen over the past two games from his lively striker, manager Chris Beech said: “You don’t score goals in League One if you’ve got nothing about you.
“We did our best in January to try and upskill the squad and to be fair, if anything, I think by signing him, Ethan [Walker] coming back, Morgan Feeney coming in, I think the players who were already here looked over their shoulders.
“It should make you step on, because you know you’ve pressure from competition. Ozzy’s providing that in the forward areas. I spoke to JJ Kayode privately about it, he stepped up, unfortunately wasn’t available for the Bradford game, but hopefully will be very soon.
“A competitive squad means you get competitive results. The players have got used to this new squad coming out of January, and the fact that we can now train and play regularly is a benefit for us all.
“We’re starting to build again. Everybody wants to win, I want to win more than most people. We got our points against Bradford, but of course we’ve gone through a period of not winning as much as we’d have liked.
“I know I’ve said this but we’ve been winning in lots of those games which is very hard for me and the players to stomach, because a lot of those results have been out of significant circumstance within the game.”
And with more about Ozzy Zanzala’s impressive display, he explained: “Ozzy is another player who has been poorly, not very well at all, but he’s back from that now. He did very well against Exeter but that was more of a welcome to Carlisle for him.
“I think he thought it would be easy, with him coming from Crewe, but he’s started to understand what I want from my attacking players, which he initially found hard.
“He’s had to be patient, and within this spell of us being unhappy with the fact that it’s taken us so long to win a game, the players who were playing have been showing some good traits. I had to look at that and decide whether it was time to give him another starting opportunity, or bring him on during games, because the lads at the time were doing well.
“I enjoyed his movement when he scored against Grimsby, and I felt it was the right time to jump on that and build from it. I told him to show everybody in Carlisle what he’s about and he’s done that for us. He likes to be in the six-yard box and we’ve maybe been lacking that in the recent run.”
“In the first half on Saturday we got two quick goals from corners,” he continued. “Those situations come from good football. The consequence of the pressure we applied was that we got the corners.
“That was very good. For Rhys to get his head on one, Ozzy to scramble one in, that’s the sort of player he is, I’m glad. He deserves credit, because we’ve got to support each and every player in different ways.
“Ozzy has stood up to be counted. He scored on Tuesday and scored two against Bradford, and he actually nearly got a hat-trick at the far post. He did run hard and he's understanding my traits to meet our traits in terms of representing Carlisle. Ultimately he’s getting up to speed, and he deserved his two goals.
“He’ll be really pleased with his second. It was good football from everybody, and Ozzy was brilliant with how he finished it, but we’ve got to keep doing it now, we’ve got to build.
“We’ve been put in those circumstances, I’ve tried my best not to hold it high as an excuse, but no club’s been put in our position, and we’ve got to crack on. We’ve got opportunities left to play games and we’ve got to do our best in them, that’s all we’ve got to do.”
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