Jolley hails Grimsby’s defensive resilience after fourth straight win

Posted Sunday, February 17, 2019 by PA

Grimsby manager Michael Jolley lauded his side’s defensive qualities as they brought up their fourth successive win in League Two against Cheltenham.

Wes Thomas’ penalty just before half-time was all that separated the two sides at Blundell Park as the hosts claimed a 1-0 victory to move them up the table once again.

It was a game that won’t go down as a classic, with neither goalkeeper truly tested throughout, although Chris Hussey went close to levelling things for the visitors with a free-kick in the second half.

Nevertheless, Grimsby’s display proved to be one to savour for Jolley.

“I think we won the game in a different kind of style,” Jolley said.

“Recently, we’ve been quite fluent and scoring quite a few goals. This time, we had to dig deep.

“It was a tough League Two game of football with fine margins, but we got our goal and then we kept a clean sheet, and it’s all credit to the players for winning the game in a different manner today.

“I think we defended well all the way through the game, and we limited them to not too many chances.

“Every time we play, we want to play good football and attack a lot, but it’s not always possible, and I think Cheltenham did a good job today of stifling some of our attacking play.

“But once we got the goal, we knew we could be a threat on the counter-attack if we had a solid base, and I think in the second half we did that well.”

For Cheltenham, the battle at the bottom of the table continues as their advantage over the bottom two was cut to six points, and boss Michael Duff was left frustrated as he came away from Cleethorpes empty-handed.

“I thought it was a poor game, and I thought it had 0-0 written all over it,” Duff said.

“Neither keeper’s really made a save, and I’m not quite sure how Hussey’s free-kick hasn’t gone in to be honest – as soon as I saw it I was expecting it to nestle in the net.

“I can’t question the players’ endeavour, although I can maybe question their quality in the final third, but off the back of last week it was a much better performance.

“Considering they’d just won three on the spin, I didn’t really think they hurt us at all to be honest, although we didn’t threaten them either.

“We scored three goals a couple of weeks ago so it’s not all doom and gloom. We need to find a little bit more belief, we had a go but I’m not sure how much belief there actually was that we were going to get back into it.”