GARY Rowett admitted that his side needed to use the ball better in their 1-0 win against Reading, but added that he was delighted by their work ethic that helped them move back into the play-off places.
The Lions secured a narrow victory thanks to Andreas Voglsammer’s first-half penalty. The Royals never really managed to muster a response and failed to register a single shot on target, with the visitors’ back line standing tall after some late pressure.
While it was far from a classic match-up or performance from Rowett’s men, he was pleased to see his side grind out yet another positive result that takes them closer to realising their dream of a top-six finish.
“I think the hard bit at this stage of the season is that, wrongly, people expect you to come somewhere like this and just win because you’re in and around the top six,” he said after the game.
“Reading have got one of the best home records, I think Paul [Ince] has done a really, really good job and they’re a tough side to play against. You knew that they would bounce back from a couple of tough results.
“I thought we started quite well. To get the goal, it’s a good bit of play, good transition, a bit of quality on the transition that gets us out. Zian does really, really well, and obviously he gets brought down.
“I think there was a question mark, it was so close. Is it on the line? Is it an inch inside? Is it an inch outside? I couldn’t really answer, but I knew that we probably got a little bit of the rub of the green with that decision.
“Then Vogi takes the penalty and it’s a brilliant, brilliant finish. He said to me ‘I’m German, what do you expect? Of course I’m going to score!’, so there was a bit of banter from Vogi but it was a fabulous penalty and we waited a long time for one.
“It’s a brilliant finish, bit of power, great direction in the top corner making it impossible to save.
“A lot of games have been similar, my only bugbear was that perhaps we made the game a bit harder than it needed to be by not using the ball well enough. I thought we were really solid and dealt with [Andy] Carroll really well.
“By playing on Cressy’s side, they perhaps thought they could bully him a little bit, but I thought he dealt with it fantastically well. For as much as Cressy took a few knocks, he probably gave Carroll a few more himself. I thought it was a real, honest battle and that we limited him to very few shots on goal.
“The same goes for Reading in general – I don’t think they had too many shots on goal in the game. They had a bit of pressure and a spell where the wing-backs started putting balls in the box where you start to say ‘wow, we might have to go to a [back] five and soak it up.
“The big thing for me is that, in the second half, we actually used the ball a bit better, that was the key. We passed the ball a little better and got ourselves into much better positions. For me, that took the sting out of Reading’s attacks as much as the good defensive platform we’ve always got.”
Photo: Millwall FC