Exeter boss Taylor delighted with second-half turnaround

Posted Sunday, September 23, 2018 by PA

Exeter manager Matt Taylor played down his half-time team talk and paid tribute to his players who came from behind to beat Cheltenham 3-1 at St James Park.

A poor City trailed 1-0 at the break as Ryan Broom capitalised on some poor Exeter defending to sweep home and put Cheltenham in front, but a rousing second half saw City turn things round to pick up the three points.

Pierce Sweeney drew them level with an exquisite volley from 25 yards; Jayden Stockley turned in a Hiram Boateng cross from close range before Jonathan Forte sealed the win two minutes from time.

“I’ve got a good group of players and they were sat there at half-time and probably knew that it wasn’t good enough in the first half,” said Taylor.

“Credit to Cheltenham, they messed us around and worked hard and were in our faces, they got around the ball and put us under a bit of pressure – it was never going to be straightforward.

“League Two football, despite the quality we have on the pitch is never going to be straightforward, so sometimes, you just have to accept it.

“My one disappointment about today was going in at half-time 1-0 down. When you are having a tough time, you have to dig in and dig in and dig in a little bit more to come in at half-time at 0-0.

“We gave them a bit of a focus second-half, we connected them a bit all over the pitch and we got the reward off the back of that. We got on the front foot, we played higher up the pitch and we got our attacking players on the ball in dangerous areas and we have the quality there to hurt the opposition.”

Cheltenham boss Michael Duff added: “I thought we were excellent in the first-half, played on the front foot, mixing our game up, played some good football and scored a good goal.

“The second half was disappointing and we need to improve the mentality of the squad. We can’t be alright for 45 minutes and go under in the second.

“We told the lads to expect a reaction from Exeter because we have come to a team at the top of the league and absolutely dominated them for 45 minutes. But there are lots of positives, there are lots of good things we worked on in the week that came off in the first 45 minutes.

“We warned them: it is not often that you are going to dominate a game for 90 minutes. That is a learning curve, we need to react better than what we did. We were hanging on a little bit in the second half and I was hoping we could dig one out.”