‘Excellent’ Forest Green display goes unrewarded
FOREST Green Rovers lost their second consecutive game on Tuesday night, hampering their chances of safety in League Two, following a 1-0 defeat at Mansfield Town.
The Stags opened the scoring just 21 minutes in when Hiram Boateng’s floating cross found Tom Nichols to win a header, which went over Vicente Reyes’ head in the goal.
On the goal conceded, Rovers boss Steve Cotterill said: “When you look at it and you know what he has done this season, he has come and taken those crosses out of the air.
“I don’t know whether the wind has played a little part of that and slowed it up in the air and he’s not quite taken it, but at the end of the day, Vinny has been magnificent for us and he has won us games this season, and between now and the end of the season he will do the same again.
“Unfortunately, when you are a goalkeeper and you make a mistake, it ends up in the back of the net, but he has been magnificent. Could he have done better for the goal tonight? I think he probably would have thought he could have done, but there is no blame attached to Vinny on that.”
Rovers did respond in the secondhalf late on with some chances of their own after a double save from Christy Pym following efforts from Emmanuel Osadebe and Kyle McAllister in quick succession.
Fankaty Dabo was brought on in the 63rd minute and nearly had an instant impact as his darting run down the right-hand side resulted in a cross that found Christian Doidge, but his effort was only put behind for a corner.
Having only lost by a one-goal margin, the Rovers boss said “They’ve (Mansfield) had to defend tonight as well as we have. We were excellent tonight, didn’t deserve to lose the game. No chance, absolutely no chance.”
The Rovers boss was certain that his side should have had a penalty. On whether he spoke to the referee about the decision, he said: “There would be no point. There is no point in talking to him at all. I thought tonight that he (Daniel Middleton) was slightly better in the second half, but for me he didn’t give us anything in the first half.”
The Stags are gunning for promotion and found themselves back in the automatic promotion spots after the win.
On the Nottinghamshire-based side, Cotterill stated: “I would imagine they’re decent considering the amount of goals they have scored and the position they are in, in the table. I thought we were excellent tonight, I thought we were excellent against a team that are probably going to be up there and get promoted.”
Despite being defeated against Mansfield, the Rovers boss is still confident in his group of players.
He said: “They are all-in and they want to stay committed until the end. They know that the season has been tough. They have come a long way in a short space of time and I thought they were excellent. We wouldn’t have been able to come here and do this tonight a couple of months ago, we got beaten 4-0 at home by them.”
The three-point gap to safety still remains the same after Colchester United lost 2-1 at home against Stockport County. Next up for Forest Green is a trip to promotion-chasing Wrexham on Saturday.