United’s weekend haul of five goals brought a range of different qualities into play – from excellent football to gambling on second balls – and with each of the goals demonstrating once again the ruthless streak that has taken the Blues to the top of the division’s scoring charts.
“We saw a lot of good things, including the goals,” manager Paul Simpson said. “I wasn’t sure what Crawley were going to be like, I thought they’d be scrapping for their lives, but we did our jobs and we made sure we didn’t give them any kind of a lift.
“We swarmed all over them, we were winning second balls and we competed in every area. To be honest, that performance was a reward for the way they’ve worked, they’ve been excellent in training, and you do worry sometimes when training has been that good that it doesn’t always then reflect in the game. In the first 45 minutes here it certainly did.”
The scoring was opened with a first goal at this level and for the club from Joel Senior.
“It was great from Joel to pop up at the far post there and get his head on things,” the gaffer told us. “Jack Armer got in there a couple of times as well, and as a full group it’s a really big result for everybody, just because of the way they’ve gone about it and the way they’ve trained all week.
“Marzi made it two and after working hard to get fit after an injury it’s always nice to get in on the act. He’s got one, he could have had another one that went past the far post, but him and Joe Garner have been a real threat with the way they worked.
“Joe is such a good character. That’s what he does – a good professional with the way he does things. All in all, the whole group were excellent.
“We put subs on to make sure everybody stays fit and available, and we’ve got good options, but we need some more bodies fit and available to come back into it.
“But with the scoreline as it was it was nice to be able to get them off and keep them fit and available. It was nice to get the two midfielders off because I was concerned about Mox and his yellow card. I felt I needed to get him out of it.
“There was a lot of good stuff but what I will say is that we do a lot of work in training on transitions, and getting three against two, or four against three overloads, and we had a few of them where I felt we could have been better and scored more goals.
“We weren’t ruthless enough and, if we had been, we could maybe have scored six or seven goals. I know people will think I’m being picky about that but that’s why we train and work on it.
“We do that work to make sure we get an end product, but we couldn’t quite finish a few of them off. Saying that, I can’t be grumbling too much because it’s a huge win for us. It keeps us ticking nicely.”
And it’s always nice to notch from set pieces, as the Blues did on two occasions.
“We had Hunts getting across the delivery and Morgan won the ball,” the manager commented. “It was still alive so he made sure he got the second touch to finish it off.
“There were a couple of others where we missed a header at the far post and there was similar at the other end in the second half. The deliveries were really good.
“Jack Armer has just come onto that over the last few weeks and he’s put some big deliveries in. We know what Mox can do, and there were some really good football goals. The truth is, I don’t care if they’re ugly goals, they were big ones for us and a huge result.”
As for the run that saw Owen Moxon mesmerise the defence and everyone else in the stadium besides, he said: “I kept shouting ‘shoot, shoot, get it off, get the shot off’ but he kept going.
“It’s great ability from him, it really is. I think that was thing with him and Alfie, they were really on the front foot. They were pressing and winning the ball in good areas and then they carried on with their runs to provide options.
“Alfie got himself in a couple of times and maybe with a little but of the finer details and better use of the ball we could have got more goals.
“But scoring from set pieces is massive, we’ve talked about that, we’ve had really good delivery, we’ve got people getting across the near post and getting on the end of things.
“I’ll say it again, we’ve just got to keep going. It’s now 13 to go, we just chalk them off, thankfully chalking this one off with three more points and it puts us into a good position.”