Squad rewriting late goals script
ROBBIE Stockdale takes his Rochdale side to Walsall today encouraging his squad to maintain their trend reversal for late goals.
Jake Beesley headed Dale into the second round of the Emirates FA Cup on Tuesday with a 90th minute winner against Notts County.
It came just three days after Alex Newby’s lastgasp leveller rescued a point against Leyton Orient at the Crown Oil Arena.
Stockdale’s side have been on the other end of late strikes this season and Dale shipped more than their quota of painful goals in the dying embers of matches last season.
But the boss believes there’s no reason why Dale can’t establish new habits.
“It’s obviously great to get a late winner,” he said. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve been on the receiving end of them and everybody tells me that’s the Rochdale way and all the rest of it, but we’ve scored two goals in two games late on to get a draw and a win - let’s try and make that the Rochdale way.”
Beesley’s winner came after Aaron Nemane had cancelled out Josh Andrews’ opener for the visitors in what Stockdale acknowledged was a difficult tie.
“It was really tough, a really difficult game,” he said.
“We saw in the first tie at our place that they’re a very good team. They have a way of playing and they made it very difficult for us, but I thought we were excellent in the first half. It was almost exactly what I wanted from us as the away team. We changed our tactics in terms of setting up a press in the mid part of the pitch, and from the goalkeeper’s kicks we though we could step on and we nearly got a couple of opportunities from that.
“We limited them to little - a long shot that hit the bar. Jay’s saying he saved it but I’m not sure he did, but we’ll give him it. Then he made a really good save down at his near post, but, apart from that, coming away from home, we didn’t really feel threatened and we created some really good opportunities on the break. It was a good goal by Josh.
“We knew they’d come onto us in the second half and to be fair to Notts County, for 20 minutes they put us under the pump a little bit and that’s where I asked my young players to try and step up and accept the challenge and, on the whole, I think they did.”
Andrews put Rochdale ahead on 15 minutes, but the Magpies equalised shortly after the hour mark. Beesley headed home at the death to send Rochdale into the second round of the competition and Stockdale was pleased with how the players kept going right until the end.
“They’re really honest. I don’t want to bleat on about how young we are, but in terms of young players, they’ll make mistakes but they won’t let us down. With their effort, they’re not letting us down, so it was pleasing.
“The substitutes came on and they made a massive impact on the game as well and they freshened it up.
“I’m stood here really pleased that we’re into the next round. From what our club has been through over the last three or four months, to have a game on TV against good opposition [is fantastic].
“It’ll be a really difficult game against Plymouth and it’s something we can go into with a lot of excitement.”
Tuesday night was Andrews’ first start for Dale since August, after a hamstring injury kept him out for all of October and much of November so far. He made his return to the squad at the weekend, coming off the bench in Rochdale’s 2-2 draw with Leyton Orient.
“Josh has been stop/ start with us. He had Covid when he first came in and he was always chasing fitness, and then unfortunately he had a really bad hamstring injury.
“He had an impact coming off the bench at the weekend and he’s had an impact starting. I decided to take him off to protect him because we can’t have him breaking down again and missing weeks, because he’s an important player like everybody is.
“He took his goal really well and you can see, it goes without saying, that he’s a physical presence on the pitch for us and I think that maybe takes a little bit of heat off Jake [Beesley] and the other forwards that play alongside him. He’ll be chuffed to bits with that and we are with him.”