TREBLE TO SEE OFF U’S
ROCHDALE assistant manager Chris Beech can’t believe the turnaround hat-trick hero Scott Hogan has made after victory over Oxford consolidated their position in the automatic promotion places.
Top-scorer Hogan had his head turned in the January transfer window but now it’s shut he’s on the goal trail, scoring three in 17 minutes to open up a five-point gap on their opponents and take his tally to 19.
It also extends their unbeaten run to five and Beech believes they have quite a talent on their hands in Hogan, who arrived from non-league Hyde.
“It’s his second hat-trick since Christmas, that’s unbelievable,” he said about Hogan. “It’s amazing what’s happened since that window has shut isn’t it?
“He’s concentrated, he’s committed, he’s doing ever so well now his mind’s clear and it’s evident in his performances.
“There’s no big drama, its football, it’s another three points. We know what we want to do but we have no right to get that, we have to earn that right.
“We just try to nail down the next thing in front of us, that’s all you can do. You can’t look beyond that in terms of suspensions and players dipping in form.
“They’re very professional people.The discipline is very high at the club, we don’t fine players. We have an environment we trust them within.
“It’s up to them to do the right things in and around the club – on the training pitch, in games. We talked about the plan at half-time in terms of staying disciplined.”
The game started cautiously with the best chances coming from set pieces, including Hogan’s close range header from Ian Henderson’s inviting free-kick.
Oxford should have gone in front when a long throw was flicked into Johnny Mullins’ path and after hitting one effort at Josh Lillis, he somehow managed to put the rebound wide from two yards.
He was made to pay just before the interval – Matt Done had already hit the bar when Jamie Allen’s cross was diverted towards goal by Peter Vincenti and Hogan prodded home on the line.
Within five minutes of the restart he doubled the lead, picking the ball up 25 yards out and beating two before slotting the ball away at the second attempt.
Mullins and Danny Rose both went close to pulling one back for the visitors before Hogan sealed the result with his third with an impudent flick from close range.
Mickey Lewis’ side have now failed to win in their last six away games and the caretaker manager was eager to move on from this setback and get back in the promotion race.
“I think there was a lack of quality to be honest,” he said
“We could have gone in front, that might have been unfair on them, but then you try and get to half-time at 00 and we just switched off.
“Everyone was determined to come out in the second-half and try and turn it around but we made a couple of mistakes.We gave the ball away and they’ve scored on the counter-attack.
“Sometimes you have days where things don’t go right for you and I think it was one of those days for a lot of players.
“We need to bounce back straight away. We’ve won our last two home games, which is good and we need to continue that.There’s 12 games to go, that’s a lot of points. We’ll be right back up for it come Monday.”