Dale’s positive approach play

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ROBBIE Stockdale was accentuating the positives ahead of Rochdale’s home game against Exeter City today.

Dale were held to a 2-2 draw by Stevenage at the Crown Oil Arena on Tuesday evening, despite utterly dominating the first half and having enough chances to have wrapped up the result by half time.

However, goals from Jake Beesley and Josh Andrews were both cancelled out by Elliott List strikes on the counter attack for the visitors, leaving the Dale squad feeling flat come the end of the game.

“It felt like a loss, the players were devastated,” admitted Stockdale.

“But I’ve pointed out that, if we’re having 26 attempts on goal then we are doing lots of things right. Can we do the end bit better? Obviously we can and that’s what we’ll be striving to do.

“The performance was more what I want and expect. If you look at the first goal, we played the ball around, drew them out and I know the supporters want us to play forward but we have to create the space and we managed to do that.

“There were so many pleasing aspects and I’ll look back at the game as I always do and we’ll review it, but my first reaction is that I was really pleased with how we played but we didn’t get what we wanted and that was a win.

“We started the game the dominant team, but it’s about winning. I’ve told the players there were many pleasing aspects but we didn’t get three points and that’s the aim of the game so we need to bottle the frustration, look at the positives and look at what we can do better and take it into a really difficult game on Saturday.”

Stockdale was disappointed with the two goals conceded, but was generally pleased with the way his side performed.

“If I look at the critical aspects of our game then the two goals conceded are poor goals - I didn’t think they had to work for them particularly hard,” he said. “That’s it – I think the rest of the game were very good. We created several clear cut chances and had 26 attempts on goal, which is enough chances to win two or three games, and unfortunately we weren’t quite clinical enough to do it.

“I can be critical of the players a lot of the time but, in the main, I thought they were very good.

“Stevenage were coming off the pitch, shaking our hands and saying how the heck did they get a draw out of it. It’s one of those really frustrating nights where you dominate every aspect of the game but we don’t get what we deserve.

“I tell the players you usually get what you deserve, but if you concede two sloppy goals you leave yourselves a mountain to climb – but we certainly had the opportunities to win it.

“You always feel you need another goal when you’re a goal ahead. When the winning margin is so small in a game the other team have always got a chance and that’s where we ask our players to really stamp their authority on the game and get that second goal. And we had chances throughout the team, everyone seemed to have a chance to score, it wasn’t like it was just falling to one player.”

Stockdale insisted it wouldn’t simply be a case of drawing a line under the goals conceded and moving on ahead of the clash against an Exeter side whose 14-game unbeaten run came to an end in midweek with a 3-1 loss at Colchester.

“We never draw a line under things, we always try to get better in both sides of the game,” said the Dale chief.

“We’ll look at the game and where we can improve, but the over-riding feeling was one of disappointment for the players that they didn’t get the three points I felt they deserved.

“We’ll look at it and we’ll look where we can improve but again I think my overriding feeling on Tuesday was one of real disappointment for the players that they didn’t get the three points that I think they deserved.”