Grecians boss reacts to Fratton Park success
EXETER CITY MANAGER PAUL TISDALE was immensely satisfied with the performances of his players after the Grecians secured a first win over Portsmouth at Fratton Park in ninety-two years on Tuesday evening.Goals from David Wheeler and Arron Davies meant that City repeated the feat that they had achieved a few weeks previously against Leyton Orient; that is, to hand the Sky Bet League 2 leaders their first defeat of the campaign.
“This was a satisfying result on a number of grounds,” Tis reflected. “First, we’d just lost our last two, and it stopped us from making that three. The second was that we hadn’t won here since 1923, which I read in the programme before the game. For those reasons I was delighted to win.
“Fratton Park is a great place to come and play football, and always presents a great challenge. It was a big game for us, and we did the job.
“Right from the first minute, the travelling fans got behind us, and when that double-block happened within the first few minutes may have been one of the most important, if not the most important, moments in the game. The players stuck to their jobs and kept their discipline.
“We’ve been here the past two years and taken Portsmouth on and opened things up and come away with nothing. We could have done that again today, but having just lost two games, it was too important for us to take any chances today, and we played a very disciplined game.
“Sometimes there’s no harm in not having the ball; you can set yourself up to attack the game without the ball. It was a real tussle; not a performance that we’d usually give, but one that was needed. We deserved the three points.”