Dino Maamria hailed his side as “brilliant” after Saturday’s win at Grimsby as a Kurtis Guthrie goal in either half made for a comfortable and professional victory away from home…
The result puts an end to a difficult period for Maamria’s men and the boss couldn’t have been more pleased with how his players performed.
“The most important thing was the clean sheet and three points. I think we needed that. We have been fairly decent away from home, this is our firth game unbeaten and although we have drawn the last four, today was coming. We changed it slightly this week, played a lot more football and we know we have to do better with the ball. I thought we were brilliant form start to finish.”
The stand-out moment of the contest was the opening goal, a swift-counter attack that resulted in Guthrie putting Stevenage ahead with a deft finish.
“Great work wasn’t it? A typical team goal, it started from the edge of our box. Terence Vancooten made a great block, we countered and it was a great finish by Kurtis. That it what we are capable of when we are on it. We put some fantastic crosses in today and we played the game that we were playing earlier in the season, when we were averaging two points per game. This week we have gone back those months, looked back on video and at the statistics to see what we have been doing well, as we had gone away from that a bit.
“In terms of Man of the Match there were a lot of players who played well today. Scott was absolutely immense, Farman like we said, Nuge, Terence Vancooten came in and was fantastic, Luther back to his best again, Joe Martin has been out for a long time and gave us that quality and composure on the ball. Moses had one of his better games, Kurtis was back to his best again scoring two goals, Ilias Chair was relentless throughout the game - there were a lot of good performances there. My concern is that we have got more knocks in the team now and we need to patch ourselves up and get back next week.”
With five games remaining in the season, Stevenage have now surpassed last season’s overall points total and Maamria was keen to stress that no matter how the season ends, it has been a positive year overall.
“A lot of people have questioned what we are doing and how far we have progressed as a club and a team. For me there is no question the progress is there for everyone to see. Last season when I came in in March, people were looking over their shoulder to try and stay in the Football League. This season we have been top 10 all season and everyone has been talking about Play-Offs. That itself is a bit shift in mindset and it is testament to the group of players I have got. Yes we don’t get it right all the time, but we know the direction we are going in.”
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