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Post Match with Justin Gardner

Post Match with Justin Gardner

Scott Hatley23 Feb 2014 - 16:27
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Millers boss Justin Gardner gives us his reaction to Aveley's 2-1 win over Waltham Forest yesterday.

With the film being ruined by the swirling wind around the ground we're unable to bring you the video of Justin's post match interview with Teddy Nesbitt but below is a full transcript of what the Millers boss had to say after yesterday's win.

Justin, you wanted a reaction from your lads after the defeat on Wednesday night, do you feel that you got that today?

Yeah, in abundance. What I’m most pleased about is football is simple – they took my instructions on board, listened, followed it to a tee.

It wasn’t a pretty match, I said them we can’t play football from the back let’s hook it on – they’ve all done their jobs. I couldn’t have asked for any more.

When they do their jobs and listen, not being big headed, we normally walk away with the points. That’s what I said to them knowing about Wednesday when they didn’t do what I asked them to, do it today and if we lose then we’ll go play your way. They’ve done it today, listened, we’ve won. Simple.

As for the goal that won it, what a hit from Nathan. He couldn’t have picked it out any better, could he?

To be honest with you there was a chance he was going to come off at half time. He’s changed my half time team talk.

This is what the frustrating thing is, he can do that week in week out, he just doesn’t do it. I said that to him, he’s got that quality. He should score every game in my opinion.

But it was a great goal and a good goal to win the game.

You picked out Teddy Nesbitt for a special mention as your man of the match, give us a word on his performance.

As you can see he put his body on the line everywhere and covered every blade of grass on that pitch. He was hooking it on, winning headers, putting his body on the line, making blocks, just what I look for.

He had to play out of position – he was a left back previously, but I do think he’s a better centre mid than at left back and that’s why I gave him man of the match.

There was a few, I thought Paul Burnett come in today after not playing for three months and was tremendous. So there were a few people who put their body on the line and that’s why they’re tired and that’s what they should be. After the Romford game and don’t think they were tired.

You mentioned about Paul Burnett, first time he’s played in three months and you got 90 minutes out of him.

He just said to me as we come off he said “how can you make me play 90 minutes, you’re unfair Gaffer” but the reason I kept him on was because he was doing well and I felt the other players that I took off were tiring so that’s why I did it.

With so many matches left before the end of the season bringing in the likes of Paul Burnett and Karl Blake from last season, is that thinking bigger squad, more rotation to get you through these games?

We do need a bigger squad, as you can see last few games the squad’s been the same. We do need more bodies and to be fair we have been trying to get Paul Burnett for a while but he just couldn’t commit at the time due to other circumstances.

But I didn’t want to lose him last year and he’s a good player as you see today, it’s his first game in three months and he was tremendous. The reason Teddy got man of the match is cause he set up a goal, put his body on the line and he was a real driving force in the centre mid today.

What did you make of the red card, if came out of nowhere really?

I didn’t see it but I spoke to my captain, Golby and he said it definitely weren’t a red card. He said something about cheating or weren’t calling that at the ref. Golby thought it was a bit harsh but I didn’t see it so can’t really comment on it.

Was that the only downside that you weren’t able to push on after that and get a third one to kill the game off?

We had a couple of chances and we didn’t put them away. But we’ve won, I’m happy, we’ve bounced back from Wednesday so hopefully we’ll go on another little run.

If we can win four games and then lose one I’ll take that kind of form. A few of the fans weren’t happy and a bit disgruntled after losing Wednesday but you’ve got to be realistic – this is our fourth game in a week with Monday coming up and it’s the same set of lads.

If we’re to win three out of four games then can you complain? I don’t think you can.

You mentioned about the game on Monday, you play VCD at home – the league leaders. They lost today at home to Dereham so they’re going to be smarting.

Well, according to everyone they’re the best footballing team in the league, but we can only judge them from when we played them. You was there, we gifted them three goals.

But we’ll respect them they’re second or top at the moment. It’ll be a different kind of game. A team who are going to play the ball on the floor and we’ll need to be at our best footballing wise to match them. We’re looking forward to it – we always do well against the big teams to be fair.

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