Danny Livesey on the Crawley game
United defender Danny Livesey gave us his reaction to the 1-1 away draw at Crawley shortly after full time on Tuesday night.
“This is a tough place to come and especially when you’re in the situation we were in where we had just lost two games,” he said. “Walsall was a horrible performance, we know about that one, but I don’t think we should have lost at Notts County. We needed to stop the rot, which we have, and now we need to go one step further and get the wins back.
“We definitely didn’t deserve to lose this one so a point was probably the fair result. They played really well for the first 20 minutes and I thought it was going to be a long night. Something clicked and suddenly it was one-way traffic from us. We had to dig in and hang on a bit in the second half but we still had chances of our own.”
“We’ve been much better defensively recently and that comes down to the work we’ve put in,” he explained. “We’ve been doing it day-in and day-out and I think that was something we had to get right. Sean O’Hanlon and Jordan Mustoe have come in and they have been brilliant. Me and Frank Simek are just going about our business and I think the confidence is back.
“I thought Paul Thirlwell was unbelievable. He was everywhere in front of us and that’s a really important role. JP [McGovern] worked his socks off as well so, when that’s happening, it makes it easier for us to do our job and defend.”
And on the ongoing treatment for his head wound, he said: “The cut hurts more as every day goes by. I’m getting closer to just putting a big pillow on my head and trying to play through the game with that!
“I don’t mind it really because I just want to be playing. I’m not one to shy away from a battle. I want to be out there and helping the team to get out of the situation we’re in. The head can hurt ... I’ll just moan about it on the coach afterwards to anyone who listens.”
United, of course, took the lead in the game courtesy of a fantastic strike from Jon-Paul McGovern and Livesey admitted it had taken everyone by surprise.
“The goal was unbelievable, what a strike,” he told us. “He meant it as well. You could see him looking and I was still jogging up the field for the cross. He’s got that quality and he’s taken a fair bit of stick for quite a long time now. He’s been playing well despite that and I thought he was really good tonight.”
“Their goal wasn’t bad either,” he continued. “He [Mat Sadler] nearly took my nose off with that strike. It’s disappointing because they did that overlap a couple of times and we were starting to get to grips with it. Then he got through on that one occasion and he will never hit a cleaner ball. It went so straight that it would still be going now if it hadn’t hit the net.”
“Every game is tough when you get to this stage of the season and Brentford will be no different,” he concluded. “The confidence is there though and hopefully we’ll put on a performance to go with it.”
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