Reds Head Coach Paul Heckingbottom spoke to the media after seeing his secure an excellent three points with a 3-0 away win at Birmingham City.
Hecky was delighted with his team’s performance to keep their third successive away clean sheet and move up to 12th in the EFL Sky Bet Championship table.
“I’m obviously delighted, three goals away from home is always good. A clean sheet even more so at a difficult place to come like Birmingham, so we’re over the moon with that.” He stated.
“All week we’ve been speaking about putting in an ‘away performance’ and controlling all the game, when we’re attacking, when we’re defending and when the ball is dead. I couldn’t be more pleased with how we did that because it contributed massively to the victory.
“To a man today we were really professional. The boys who came on carried out the same game-plan and in the end, it was a really deserved win for us.”
The Reds were never truly tested by their Birmingham counterparts, which Hecky credited the players for.
“It’s credit to the game-plan and the fact that the players carried it out. We’ve spoken before about how far we have come in a year, and today I said let’s put a marker down for the next year, you can’t just be satisfied with where you are. Today we were on about where we can be in another year. As a football club, everyone needs to be thinking that way because you need to focus on getting better. That’s been our focus for the whole week and it came out in the performance."
Adam Davies made a stunning save in the first half, which was key in a tight opening period. Hecky spoke of how important it is for everyone to contribute, and in today’s match stated that second goal was the key part.
“Everyone has contributed!” He said. “We had everything going forward, and at the back. Everyone has got to contribute, it’s a real tough league so more often than not when we get it right we get the win.
“The second goal was key. They came out and threw everything at us but the defending was great and Davo didn’t have a save to make in the second half which was great. We wanted to control the ball more and go on to score the goals because we felt there were chances for us. Even in the first half we thought we could have scored more. They second goal killed the game, then the third was the icing on the cake.”
The Reds have been sharing the goals across the pitch this season, with centre-back Marc Roberts getting the ball rolling in this afternoon’s victory with a glanced header from Hourihane’s excellent cross. Winnall added two late on, following more magic from Hourihane’s left foot to provide the chances, as the Captain ended the match with three assists.
“I’m not bothered who it is (scoring the goals). Everyone wants to score the goals but we are a team and it’s not about any individual. Tom Bradshaw was fantastic up there today next to Sam (Winnall), and I think if people start getting selfish and thinking it’s all about them, we won’t get anywhere, it’s a team effort.”
The Reds Head Coach then stated how he wants to see his team keep putting in performances of this nature, as they have shown that they can do it on more than one occasion this season.
“We’ve got to keep getting it right at both ends of the pitch, if we don’t it will be difficult. We don’t want a mentality of ‘let’s just score more goals than them’ or ‘keep a clean sheet because you’re guaranteed a point’…. I want both!! We want to score as many goals as possible whilst keeping as many clean sheets as possible and that’s the mentality we want. You’re not always going to get perfection, but we know we can do it, everyone knows we can and we’ve shown it again today.”
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