Grecians boss reacts to Crawley win
EXETER CITY manager Paul Tisdale praised his side's team contribution after the 2-0 win at Crawley Town.Goals from Jake Taylor and Ollie Watkins secured the Grecians a fourth consecutive win on their travels, and the City boss was pleased with his side, who had to contend with the late withdrawal of captain Jordan Moore-Taylor from the starting line-up.
"I thought it was a really connected performance," Paul said. "We got the mixture right today, as we have done away from home pretty frequently recently. We had one or two changes forced upon us, but I thought that we dealt with that really well. It was tricky conditions, but I thought that we played sensibly. We had some good movements, and we had discipline with our play. Our discipline in our attacking play meant that we were always in the right positions to defend. It was a good performance.
"It's always tricky when somebody drops out in the warm-up - Jordan felt ill and said that his head was thumping. I asked him to give it another five minutes at first, but at the end of it he said that he was just feeling too unwell. To cut a long story short, you have to make a quick decision - I wanted to put a defensive-minded player on, so it was a choice between [Jamie] McAllister or [Jordan] Tillson, and given the slippery, unsure conditions, I thought that having Christian Ribeiro's athleticism at centre-back would suit us, and that meant that I asked Jamie to play at right-back. I know that he's a left-sided player naturally, but he did it competently. Arron Davies, I have to say, was very assured in midfield. He's been out of the side recently; he's played in the reserves, but he's been very professional about it. That's what you have to do, but he's come in today and done very, very well.
"We missed a couple of really good chances. Lee Holmes missed the pick of them at the end of a really good move; I'd have liked us to get a second soon after the first, but it wasn't to be. There was a really good save from Bobby Olejnik in the first minute of the second half. He's paid to make some really good saves, and he did that today. I think what is symptomatic of a good team performance is that everybody plays competently; I don't think that any player was under-par today."