Magpies continue unbeaten away record under Curle...
Keith Curle was delighted with his team’s opening day performance at the Alexandra Stadium, which saw the 10-man Magpies collect three points.
Goals from Francois Zoko and Yoann Arquin gave Notts a two-goal lead against Crewe Alexandra but following Arquin’s red card the hosts were able to get back into the match through Mathias Pogba.
A committed defensive performance enabled County to hold on, albeit with a few scares, and got the team off to the perfect start.
It was the first time that Crewe had been beaten on home turf since January 2 and the result extended Curle’s unbeaten away record in the league since taking over in February.
“I don’t build my football philosophies on stats, I’ve just said to the players that I want us to compete to win every game from now until the end of the season,” said the gaffer in his post-match interview on Magpie Player.
“As long as we give everything we can do to win the game, sometimes that means stopping the opposition and then going and playing, whereas there’ll be games where teams have to stop us from playing.
“We watched Crewe a couple of times and we knew they were a vibrant, buoyant team and want to play football in the right way.
“What we couldn’t afford to do was to let that happen, so we had to get closer to them and try to stop them from playing before imposing ourselves on the game.”
He added: “We’ve been trying to build a squad here that’s got the excitement, whereby we can go and score goals.
“But also there’s a work ethic in the football team at the minute that shone through in the last 20 minutes when we were under the cosh.
“It was all hands on deck and nobody was found wanting.”
For full post-match reaction, sign in to Magpie Player.