MATT’S VICTORY IS TAYLOR-MADE
PROUD Matt Taylor praised his Exeter City side for beating leaders Cambridge “in difficult circumstances” and boosting their play-off chances with a stunning triumph.
“We lost Robbie Willmott yesterday with an injury. We’ve got a goalkeeper who’s been sick throughout the warm-up. We were running out of players,” explained Taylor.
“I was worried before the game because that’s the lowest we’ve been in terms of where the squad’s been.
“But what a fantastic performance! “We just started the game well and grew in terms of the belief.
“Cambridge are such a good attacking team this season, but we felt there would be space on that pitch. Certainly on the regain, we broke through that space on numerous occasions and created enough to hurt them. Getting ahead was absolutely key.
“They were dangerous, they can create chances out of nothing, they’ve got such good quality players and you saw for that ten of 15 minute period at the start of the second half how good they were.
“We changed shape and just took a little bit of extra space away from them but still packed a punch ourselves. That group of players have got what they deserved today.”
The Grecians made a perfect start by opening the scoring inside three minutes.
Jake Taylor crossed from the right and Ryan Bowman met it with a fine flicked header which went in off the far post. They doubled the lead after 15 minutes through Jack Sparkes, whose speculative effort from 25 yards found its way in having bounced in front of goalkeeper Callum Burton.
Cambridge reduced the deficit ten minutes after the break, with Hiram Boateng’s excellent cross against his old club fired home by Joe Ironside, who scored for the first time in 14 games.
Boateng fired into the side netting as the leaders pressed for a leveller, but after 67 minutes Exeter’s twogoal advantage was restored after Josh Key progressed to the byline and saw his ball scrambled in by Archie Collins.
Exeter completed the scoring ten minutes from the end when Nigel Atangana’s pass into the box was dispatched by top scorer Matt Jay.
Cambridge boss Mark Bonner rued the poor start his side made, but was confident the U’s would respond well for the promotion run-in.
“We didn’t start well enough, and it was too easy for them all afternoon to create chances against us and score against us, and that’s not normally us,” he rued.
“They’re top scorers for a reason and they showed that a little bit. We weren’t as aggressive or intense as we needed to be to stop them from creating the chances that they did.“