Mariners in no mood to party after crucial win

LEAGUE Two survival may have been secured, but Grimsby Town manager David Artell was in no mood to celebrate.

Goals from Cheltenham Town loanee Liam Smith and forward Donovan Wilson finally settled the nerves for Mariners fans as they struck late on to beat Swindon.

Sutton United ended up with just a point from their game, which meant Artell’s side would have stayed up regardless of their own result, but the Grimsby boss was pleased to see his side doing the business themselves.

But there will be no champagne corks popping.

“We’re not celebrating staying up,” he said. “We’ve done our job by winning the game through having a good defensive shape and showing some quality in the final third when it mattered.

“We’ve often lacked quality in games, but when we have had it recently then we’ve won games of football.

“We’ve done our job in staying up, but we’re not going to celebrate because we shouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place.

“I’ll take a fair amount of blame for that – it’s not about portioning out blame really, but I make the decisions and the buck stops with me. Since the Doncaster game, we’ve undoubtedly improved and we haven’t lost many at home since.”

There was not much in the way of goal-mouth action in the first half, with the best chance for the visitors coming inside the first six minutes as Charlie Austin headed wide.

The second half followed a similar path to the first, but the home side finally edged ahead in the 75th minute through Smith who finished off a quick counter from the Mariners.

Wilson’s strike came in the 85th minute to make it a more comfortable finish for Grimsby – smashing in off a post from the edge of the box.

For Swindon, interim head coach Gavin Gunning got a chance to look at some young talent in the game with their safety already secured – as he reflected on a difficult campaign with one game still to play.

“The composure Harley Hunt has shown in the game is fantastic and the young players are learning all the time and doing brilliant stuff at the same time,” he said.

“They’ve made mistakes but they’re learning from them which is part of the process.

“It’s been a bad season – we had a good first eight games, but it has not been good enough.”