CITY SWEEP PAST BROOM OPENER
EXETER City manager Matt Taylor played down his half-time team talk and paid tribute to his players after they came from behind to beat Cheltenham.
A poor City trailed 1-0 at the break as Ryan Broom capitalised on some poor Exeter defending to sweep home Immanuelson Duku’s cross, but a rousing second half saw City turn things round to pick up the three points.
Pierce Sweeney drew them level with an exquisite volley from 25 yards, Jayden Stockley turned in a Hiram Boateng cross from close range and Jonathan Forte scored the 1,000th goal of the Supporters’ Trust regime at City to seal the win two minutes from time.
Taylor said: “I’ve got a good group of players and they were sat there at half-time and probably knew that it wasn’t good enough in the first half.
“Credit to Cheltenham, they messed us around and worked hard and were in our faces, they got around the ball and put us under a bit of pressure – it was never going to be straight-forward.
“League Two football, despite the quality we have on the pitch is never going to be straight-forward, so sometimes, you just have to accept it. My one disappointment about today was going in at half-time 1-0 down.
“When you are having a tough time, you have to dig in and dig in and dig in a little bit more to come in at halftime at 0-0.
“We gave them a bit of a focus second half.
“We got on the front foot, we played higher up the pitch and we got our attacking players on the ball in dangerous areas and we have the quality there to hurt the opposition.”
Cheltenham had several chances to go in front in the first half before Broom’s goal. Tyrone Barnett headed wide, Kevin Dawson was off target from distance and the midfielder narrowly failed to convert from close range from a dangerous low cross.
Cheltenham boss Michael Duff said: “I thought we were excellent in the first half, played on the front foot, mixing our game up, played some good football and scored a good goal.
“The second half was disappointing and we need to improve the mentality of the squad. We can’t be alright for 45 minutes and go under in the second.
“We told the lads to expect a reaction from Exeter because we have come to a team at the top of the league and absolutely dominated them for 45 minutes. But there are lots of positives, there are lots of good things we worked on in the week that came off in the first 45 minutes.
“That is a learning curve, we need to react better than what we did.” EXETER CITY: Pym 7, Sweeney 7, Aaron Martin 7 (Forte 69, 6), Croll 7, Moxey 7, Law 7, Taylor 7, Tillson 7, L Martin 7, Boateng 8 (Collins 90, 6), Stockley 7. Subs not used: O’Shea, Hamon, Jay, Oates, Ogbene.
CHELTENHAM TOWN: Flinders 7, Forster 6, Mullins 6, Boyle 6, Alcock 6 (Mooney 66, 6), Dawson 6 (Kalala 85, 6), Atangana 6, Broom 6, Maddox 6, Duku 6 (Jones 62, 6), Barnett. Subs not used: Clements, Tozer, Lovett, Field.