Wanderers' manager reflects on his side's latest victory against Oldham on Saturday afternoon
A Zach Clough brace against Oldham Athletic earned Wanderers a third consecutive victory in all competitions on Saturday afternoon.
And speaking following the game against the Latics, manager Phil Parkinson covered the following points…
On picking up a hard-earned victory over Oldham...
It was a very pleasing victory – it was a tough game, but we knew it would be.
So many aspects of the display today though were excellent and it was especially nice to get that second goal to give us a bit of breathing space.
All round though, the levels that we showed, particularly in the first half, were very, very pleasing and we were able to build on last week’s win down at Swindon.
A lot of teams around us in the league have dropped points too which is a bonus, but really it is a bit early to start looking at everybody else.
We just want to focus on ourselves. I said a couple of weeks ago that we were a team who’d gone away from playing with any real structure that we’d started the season with, but we’ve got back to that now over the last two or three games.
We’ve got our rewards though. It was a hard working team display with some very good individual performances.
It’s good to get that winning feeling again, particularly at home where it was important for us to get back to winning ways.
We know we let ourselves down against Oxford so it was important that we got the fans back on our side.
On the performance of Zach Clough…
He did very well today and scored a fantastic free-kick, while his all-round play was superb. I said earlier this week that he’s getting fitter and fitter all the time and he showed that today.
He’s getting his rewards for the hard work in training – we need our big players to produce though and he’s certainly done that today.
He’s a key player for us and he’s a real talent. Players like him are hard to find, but he was excellent today, like all of the team as a whole.
They may not have been eye catching performances, but ultimately people have done their jobs and done them well which is what matters.
They were just as important as Zach’s moments of class today.
On a third consecutive clean sheet…
We’re pleased and we’ll keep working on that. Mark Howard has had to make one really good save, but that’s the sign of a goalkeeper who’s at the top of his game.
All the back four though stood up well throughout though and Lawrie Wilson particularly is growing in confidence with each passing game which is really good to see.
On the relationships between the players on the pitch...
We’ve had a month now of the new players bedding in and you can see how they’ve settled now.
Sometimes when you make changes, it does take a while for things to settle down, but we’re in a good place now.
We sensed it this week in training that we were going to do well today – it’s probably been the best week of training that we’ve had since we arrived here.
All we want to do now is get on that coach down to Millwall where we can watch the TV go round for four hours with us in the top six of this division.
That was the aim and we’re now looking forward to Tuesday’s trip down to the capital.
On picking up three points against a local rival…
It’s definitely a little bit sweeter. I said during the week to the players that Oldham are a side who play with confidence on their travels and even at 1-0 down, they still had the belief that they could get back into the game.
It was important that we didn’t take them lightly and equally that the fans who came today didn’t underestimate the challenge in front of us.
And finally, reflecting on the next game against Millwall…
They’ve had a good result today, so it’ll be a terrific game. It’s one we’ll be looking forward to though and especially one that we’ll be ready for by heading into it off the back of three points.