United’s performances over the last run of games have been much closer to the standards the players have set themselves, with Tuesday night’s home win a lesson in resilience and persistence as well as being good to watch.
“I thought it was huge to win that game,” manager Paul Simpson said. “I didn’t put that added pressure onto the players by saying it was a must-win game, but I felt it was really important that we did.
“We’re very early into the season but we have to keep getting those small wins that give everybody that bit of belief and hope that you need.
“Doing that in front of our own fans was really important, especially after the disappointment with the late goal we conceded at Portsmouth. I was pleased with the performance and absolutely delighted with the result, and also a little bit relieved that we got the three points as well.”
And the Burton game was one that needed a reaction to the hammer blow of the late goal conceded last Saturday, as well as reactions within the game to setbacks, particularly when the visitors went ahead against the run of play.
“It’s important to see that but I’d rather not have to need a reaction because something negative has happened,” he commented. “The truth is I was reasonably pleased with how we were playing when we went a goal down.
“It was a case that when you have a team that’s well set up and they’re just in a mid or a low block, and they’re trying to frustrate you and wait for a mistake, you have to be patient.
“You have to keep trying to stretch them, and we tried to force it through the middle of the pitch when we conceded our goal.
“It was too tight to do it, and I thought we’d defended the first part of it really well. We didn’t get a good enough reaction, but we just have to keep doing things properly.
“We have to keep being patient and moving the ball quickly and, to be fair, we did it really well after they’d scored their goal.
“And obviously when you win well it’s the sort of feeling you want. We have to keep striving to get that feeling.
“I think we’ve worked hard to get that level of performance, the work ethic of the players was absolutely fantastic in terms of the total distances and high speed running and sprinting stats.
“They’ve got to do it again. Wednesday and Thursday have been all about recovery and making sure the players are freshened up, then we’ll do the last bits of preparation before we travel on Friday. Hopefully the players will be in a good state to be able to go and do it all again for us.”
A relatively settled starting eleven for a consistent run of games must also have helped in terms of the team getting to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
“It certainly helps,” he agreed. “It’s a case of I don’t think the lads who have been playing have done a lot wrong.
“Also, a lot of players who had their opportunity against Forest didn’t take it. You balance both of those things and go from there.
“The lads who have started games have done really well, and deserve to get the opportunity to go again, so while we’re getting performances and results like we have been, then the group will stay fairly steady. Hopefully that will be the case for a good while now.
“And we’re not afraid to try different things within that. We took Owen Moxon off set plays on Tuesday night at half time because unfortunately the delivery from them wasn’t right.
“That’s a big part of our games, getting set plays right. We’ve got Mox who has got a fantastic ability, but it just wasn’t happening for him.
“Thankfully we had Callum Guy who came into it, he put a ball into the box and probably Sam Lavelle should have scored from it. I actually think he knows that himself.
“The delivery was a bit better in the second half, but Saturday is another different game so maybe Mox will be back on them, we’ll just have to wait and see.
“We work on set plays, but it all comes down to that delivery. If it’s right going into the box it comes down to people having a real desire to get on the end of it.
“I think we’ve been close, but not close enough, so we need to get back to getting to that level that we had last season where we were scoring more goals from set plays.”
A huge part of the feeling that things are about to take off has been the support from the terraces.
“It tells me that we’ve doing things properly,” he said. “It also tells me that the fans have got on board as well.
“I keep thanking them for turning up, and I can only keep doing that. I was really pleasantly surprised when I saw the attendance on Tuesday because that was brilliant.
“Burton brought 140 or so, and that means the vast majority of the crowd were home supporters. I think that just shows the positive feeling that we’ve got around the place from everybody.
“I went up and spoke to everybody in Foxy’s before the game and that was full, it was packed. It looked as if they were squashing tables together as much as they possibly could so all of those things are really positive, and we want to keep it going for as long as we possibly can. The best way to do that is to keep winning games of football.
“It helps us to get that sense of unity. That’s been built up over the last couple of years. It had gone away because for me there had always been that feeling of the fans and the football club, the real connection, but for whatever reason it went away.
“Now we have to keep that connection going even stronger. I know there’s a lot of talk around the new ownership group, and if that’s successful there’ll be a lot of things to improve the experience of the supporters, and hopefully it will also improve their experience of watching an even better team.”
