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Manager "a terrific team performance overall"

23 January 2021
Author afc media

 

Dons manager Derek McInnes was delighted to see his team get back to winning ways against Motherwell following a positive performance through the 90 minutes at Pittodrie.

“I thought we were good from the outset. It was important after the disappointment of last week to respond in the right manner and I felt we did that. I wanted us to be robust enough and aggressive enough with our defending to give us a chance to get things going forward and we were much more like our proper selves today.

“Nothing drains confidence in a team in any game more than losing poor goals, and that’s what happened last week, so we wanted to address that today and I felt we stuck to our task. We were better from middle to front, I thought we were much more threatening and once we got the goal, we settled into things.

“Tommie’s goal was so important because we’ve seen before, such as the Dundee United game here, we’ve been rampant first half, not got our goal and then it becomes hard after that.

“But getting in front, we started the second half in much the same fashion and obviously the sending off makes things a little bit more straightforward with us already in front. You still have to compete and do the right things, but I thought we used the width of the pitch really well to stretch the ten men.

“The clean sheet was very important after last week too, but above all I was pleased with the confidence and the intent of the players. It takes us back to third, we’re five points better off than this stage last season, and hopefully we can build on today’s performance. There’s a big period coming up, St Johnstone, double header with Livingston and then Hibs, so it’s good to go into that with confidence after today.

“Consistency is so important and but for a couple of bad days, we’ve had that. It’s been just five league defeats this season, three against Rangers who have been tough opponents for everyone. We’re looking for more but by and large, we’ve done ok so far.

“What we have to do is keep it going and keep striving to be better, to try and meet our objectives. Today was a real step in the right direction in what could have been a difficult afternoon with Motherwell having had a couple of positive results.

“I thought the players were terrific in the face of that. We had some very good individual performances but it was a terrific team performance overall.”

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