Goal scorer in Accrington game says team are doing the right things
Matt Fish said he believed he was due a goal after scoring the winner against Accrington Stanley at MEMS Priestfield on Saturday.
The Gills right-back scored his third goal of the season in a 1-0 win at the weekend, and although the result puts Martin Allen’s side eight points clear at the top of the league table, Matt refused to get carried away.
He said: “I’ve had a couple of chances against Rochdale – I like cutting in on my left foot and I’m confident on it, maybe the gaffer hasn’t been watching!
“I hit it sweet and it has won us the game and it’s a great result at the end of the day.
“Other teams haven’t played today so it was important for us to open up a gap and it’s better to have the points than have the games in hand.
“We just move on to Fleetwood and then move on to Rotherham so we have two games in three days. Once those two are out of the way it will be a little bit clearer with four games to go.
“Even though we have defended for quite a lot of the second half I didn’t feel like we were going to concede a goal. Even though we haven’t had a lot of the ball and they came on to us Nels has only had three or four saves to make.”
The defender responded to a question that the Gills seem to do a lot of defending, but Matt said as long as the team are getting the required results they are more than happy to adopt that stance.
He said: “It’s ugly but it has worked for us and there is no reason we can’t do that in the games when we are 1-0 up.
“The more we defend it's harder to get out and for the strikers it’s harder for them to hold it up because there is no-one close to them. When the crowd walk out the gate they won’t be saying we have defended for 45 minutes, they will say we have won the game.
“At the start of the season it was like that, when teams didn’t know how we played it was me and Joe getting forward and causing trouble.
“Teams then knew that we did that so they stopped us doing it but in the last few games we have had license to get forward with the system we have played and I think it works.
“Joe had a great strike where he nearly scored and I enjoy playing that way so hopefully we can keep it going.
“It was the same at Rochdale; even though they had a lot of the ball they still didn’t have many shots on goal. We were defending for most of the second half but they weren’t really causing any problems and I am happy to defend like that if it gets a result.
“With people like Leggy, Barrett, Nels and then me and Martin at the back we have kept 16 or 17 clean sheets so we are quite confident we can do that and I know the gaffer sets us up to do that sometimes.
“We just dug in and we have done that all season.”
For a full match report click here.
For Martin Allen’s match reaction click here.