Joey, we’ll start with the performance and the result. How pleased and relieved are you after that?
We always felt it was going to come, and obviously, it’s tricky when you’re in the spell we’re playing another good side because we had lost five or six coming in and a lot of them were to teams in the bottom six who don’t really play. They boot it long and it’s quite hard to set up against that.
Historically, we have done better against teams that have a pattern of play and don’t play hoof-it football, and Oxford are one of those teams. They have the ability to build out from goal kicks and they have a lot of offensive threats, and that kind of suits our team.
We’ve got some big boys to come through the Mem in a couple of months and we have got to travel to some of the big boys as well, but, weirdly, we look forward to playing the aggressive and forward-thinking attacking teams.
With this young group in the past few weeks, we have really struggled against teams who ask a lot of physical questions by booting the ball long and competing. We’ll be better for that baptism and adversity we have come through, but also we are looking up the table again because we have been able to keep a valuable clean sheet and score three goals on our travels.
The first goal was always going to be vital. Sam Finley hit his own post in the first minute, but when it came to the penalty, was it always going to be Scott to take it because I think Aaron looked interested?
I leave it to the lads. Managers can’t really sense players’ confidence on the pitch. They see things and hear things and feel things that we can’t from the touchline.
We’ve got a number of competent penalty takers – obviously, Scott, Antony Evans, Aaron Collins and Paul Coutts. The key for me is whoever takes it puts it in the back of the net.
Whenever Scott steps up, I’m never in any doubt. I always fancy him to score. He’s got a great ability to take a penalty and that just settled us down.
But I must give enormous credit to Lamare Bogarde who followed in on Azza’s shot for the second phase, nips in front of their lad and he brings him down. That opens the game up for us.
We scored a really good goal after that, a good team goal down the side with a great ball in from Scott and he repays Azza for taking the penalty. They both got a goal each.
The front side of the team scoring is really nice and a clean sheet to boot.
How pleased are you with the clean sheet and the fact the narrative is not about the goalkeepers? Has that settled down, hopefully?
Yeah, we said to you we wanted competition for places. We all know what a good goalkeeper James Belshaw is, but everybody needs to look over their shoulder and feel that if you don’t perform at a high standard, the next man in is capable of doing that. That drives the competition in the squad.
Some of the fans got a little bit frustrated with the way the situation played out, but it was the only way we could get real talent in to compete. Ellery is a top goalkeeper, he is going to be a really good goalkeeper.
Now we are fortunate. We have got competition for places running throughout the squad. You look today, Calum Macdonald started last week and Luke McCormick is a very good player and, unfortunately, I couldn’t get them in the matchday squad.
Really good signs for our squad building and 3-0 away at Oxford and a clean sheet, you would take that every day of the week.
You and the players must enjoy this today, but how nice would it be to back this up next week at the Mem with another victory when you play Barnsley?
We’re just going to enjoy this victory because it has been a few weeks and then the focus will shift to an in-form Barnsley.
For us, it’s another good challenge. They beat us at their place and we want to get back to the Mem and get back to winning ways in our stadium.
Joey, how good did that feel going over to the fans? Great support for you today after a long wait to reward them.
Well, you know I actually don’t like doing that. It’s against my personality to do that, but in the past few weeks I have realised how much I actually miss it and how important it is to have that connection with the fanbase.
Sometimes when you’re on a bad run, you never know when it is actually going to come or if it’s ever going to come again. For some managers, you get on a losing streak and it’s tough to shake off.
I’m so pleased for our players and our fans and our younger and newer players to see how passionate our fans are. They turned up and took their allocation today and supported the team right through the game and now they know what it’s like to win in a quartered jersey.
Nothing you can give them or buy replaces that feeling, so it’s an important moment for us to get back looking up the table and the most important thing is a solid defensive showing and a clean sheet to go with the three goals.
A lovely moment for Luca Hoole as he went over to take the adulation after he scored in an outstanding performance on his return to the team.
I thought he was excellent. It’s tough to single anyone out in a good team performance like that, but I thought Luca grew and grew and grew into the game.
He dealt with Wildschut in the first half, who is a tricky opponent, and in the second half he really came into his own. The cherry on top of that is the goal he scores.
I’m really pleased for him. He is a cracking young player and a pleasure to work with every day. If he keeps that attitude and that level of performance, he has got an enormous future.
Picking out an unsung hero in that game is probably John Marquis because he played a pivotal role in both goals in that first half and he did a lot of hard work for the team.
He’s had to be patient. He’s a senior player and he’s got a lot of experience. He’s seen Josh Coburn and Aaron play the lion’s share of games, and even Ryan Loft who is now back from suspension.
He has had to be patient and wait for his chance, but he has taken that. He was excellent last week in a not-fantastic performance from us.
That has warranted him staying in the nine jersey and keeping the starting position. I thought his 65-70-minute shift today was really talismanic for the group.
Alright, he will want to create more opportunities to score goals, but he did a real shift for the team in terms of giving us a platform to play off.
I am really pleased for John. He’s a great team person and he has been a fantastic addition to our group.
It was one of your smarter performances in quite a while. You played on the toxicity in the stadium and you earned the right as well because in those 20 minutes after half time, they are always going to come out fired up, but you were really solid in that period and you earned the right all day by doing the sensible things right.
Yeah and we talked a lot this week about getting the basics right. If we take care of the basics, that gives us an opportunity to build a performance.
We want to control the ball and play and on a tricky pitch today we played at the right moments, but we also had a strategy and a game plan and I thought the lads executed that superbly.
I must give enormous credit to the boys on the pitch. They were excellent and, as you point out, they had to weather a storm as you would expect. They have got some good players and they would have been disappointed going in 2-0 down.
They asked questions in the second period, but everything they asked we had the antidote for. If it didn’t get blocked by our defenders, Belly was there to throw his hands on it and make a comfortable save.
When did you make the decision to change goalkeepers this week? Was it immediately after the Burton game or was there something in training?
I watched the (Burton) game back and when we debrief the game afterwards, you go through what you could have better and last time out we played their type of game. I said to the lads ‘We are footballing side and we have got to get the ball down and play, we have got players’.
Today, six changes and it shows the quality of the squad we have got. We haven’t had the opportunity to do that all the time via suspension or injury.
For me to get Sam Finley back with a lot of nous and experience, Paul Coutts and Lewis Gibson, there is no coincidence that when he and Belly come back in that it settles Jarell and the young lads down around him.
It’s a really good feeling to get that clean sheet. It is nice to win, obviously, but when you can do it with a solid defensive foundation to build off, it gives you real optimism of what’s to come.
All of a sudden, things look a bit brighter with near enough a clean bill of health apart from Jordan Rossiter and the suspensions are back and the centre-back partnership looked strong today. Things feel like they have come back together a bit today.
It’s amazing what a win can do.
But in terms of the squad makeup, you’ve got options. You are bringing Coburn on, for example. You are able to strengthen the team from the bench and in the past few weeks when you have missed players for various reasons and not been able to do that.
And everyone goes through adverse moments in the season. We’ve got to look at the teams that came up with us last year and we finished third on the last day of the season.
You look at all of those teams, I know Forest Green are having a tough time and they were champions, but there is a much of a muchness between (the rest of) us. We’ve all won eight, nine, 10 games.
We’ve got to establish ourselves and not lose track. You can’t run in this game before you learn to walk and this season was about consolidating, being really solid and making sure we are a League One club and giving us that platform to build off.
Today’s result goes a long way to that target of 50-52 points. Obviously, we want to get more than that, but we have got to go incrementally here. We’ve yet to establish ourselves as a League One club and we have got another 13 games to do that.
Paying fans have the right to vent their frustration but I imagine it was not the nicest thing to see a fellow manager get that sort of treatment throughout the game?
I was torn because we were both coming in with poor form but you don't ever want to see that and I think the job Karl has done here will stand the test of time," Barton said.
I think he has been outstanding and constantly produced play-off chasing groups. In the midst of that, they have sold a lot of talent and it is tough at these levels if you keep losing your best players to replace them.
He has done a wonderful job. He's had a bit of adversity and I've seen it with Karl's teams before, and they pick up and they go on an incredible run and I'm just hoping they give him time because that is what every manager needs.
It's not Karl's fault the players at the moment aren't firing on all cylinders. He hasn't become a bad manager in the past six months. He has been at this for a long time and had a lot of success at MK and a lot of success here.
The grass isn't always greener so I'm hoping they pick up next week and they can get winning for him and hopefully he can turn this club around again and show that upward trajectory and that play-off chasing team we've known Oxford to be.
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