Cooper showers praise on his defensive unit

FOREST Green Rovers manager Mark Cooper said his defenders were “tremendous” as they drew 0-0 away to Oldham Athletic.

While boosted by the arrival of Shawn McCoulsky and the return of Christian Doidge up top, Cooper insisted his defensive players deserve as many plaudits.

“Everyone’s talking about the depth of strikers we’ve got, but I mentioned to the boys (in defence) they were tremendous today,” he told the club’s official website. They kept a clean sheet, I was pleased and they defended really well.”

In a game where Forest Green had more of the chances, and after naming an unchanged side for the fourth consecutive game, Cooper believes the more important thing is that Rovers came away with at least a point.

He said: “It’s unfortunate. We had enough chances today to win three or four games, but it just wouldn’t go in.

“The main thing then is that you have to take a point.

“You have to make sure you don’t get caught with a sucker punch and get beat, when you know you should have won.

“So we should have won the game, we didn’t, and so the next thing to do is take a point.”

The away side started off brightly straight from the first whistle and early chances for both in-form George Williams and Tahvon Campbell were well-saved by goalkeeper Daniel Iversen.

Cooper said: “Oldham camped in their own half and let us have the ball and showed a lot of respect to our players. We cut through them at will and the only negative is that we haven’t put the ball in.”

Despite being held, Forest Green continued their impressive run of unbeaten games and now look ahead to their next home games against Bury and Grimsby, next Saturday and Tuesday respectively.

“We have to keep going,” said Cooper. “It’s another point and we leave here slightly frustrated because we haven’t won.

“But we look at the bigger picture – it’s an away point and we now have two home games to come.”