Joe’s beauty bittersweet in Dale loss
ACCRINGTON Stanley midfielder Joe Pritchard saw it as a bittersweet moment after scoring his first goal for the club during the 2-1 defeat to Rochdale on Saturday.
Pritchard joined Stanley in the summer after leaving former club Bolton Wanderers, and while he was pleased with his first strike for the club, he had mixed emotions.
“It’s horrible when you’re in a situation like this, for me if the team doesn’t win then it can never be a good day,” he told the club’s official website.
“It’s a great strike and it’s my first goal personally which is unbelievable for a shot like that to go in, but if you don’t win a game for me then you don’t get anything out of it.
“I think we’ve been playing well all season to be fair, I think we’ve been really unfortunate with a lot of results, getting draws and we’re just dropping points everywhere when really we should be picking them up.
“A game like Saturday, I think we should be picking points up against teams like that, and unfortunately we’ve lost 2-1.
“I’ve always hoped that at some point in the season, it is going to turn around and we’ll start picking up the points whether we’re playing a different system.
“We’ve got a group of unbelievable players in this squad, the manager’s brilliant in the way he puts us together.
“In the first half I thought we played really well even with three at the back, it’s just a matter of the luck coming our way. We know we’re a great team, we all know we’re good players.”
Next up for Stanley is Ipswich on Sunday, and Pritchard is well aware of how big a game it is.
“We have to wait that extra day and play on the Sunday against a great side as well and it’s a really important game for us,” he said.
“I’m not a big fan of training in the week, I just want the games to come thick and fast, so the sooner the games for me the better.
“One thing that I’ve seen since I’ve been at the club is we’re not inferior to any team we play, we’ve beaten Olympique de Marseille in pre-season and played against other great teams in this league and played them off the pitch as well.
“We can match these teams and it’s just a matter of picking up the points.”