McCann hails Rovers’ steel after win over Luton
Posted Sunday, September 09, 2018 by PA
Grant McCann was delighted his Doncaster side ‘showed the other side of their game’ as they picked up their first win in seven matches.
Goals early in each half from Matty Blair and Ben Whiteman helped Rovers to a 2-1 win over Luton, with Doncaster forced to show plenty of defensive resolve to hold onto their lead.
“We are showing our steel at the minute,” McCann said. “We’re showing both sides of our game.
“We showed our quality against Portsmouth and Peterborough and we showed our steel in this one and that is the side you need if you are going to challenge in this league.
“That is four unbeaten in the league – two against the top two and one against a team I think will be in the top six without a shadow of a doubt.”
Luton equalised on the stroke of half-time through Elliot Lee, deservedly so after largely dominating attacking play.
But Rovers led again when Whiteman scored inside the first minute of the second period and McCann was pleased with the second-half performance.
“We reacted at half-time,” he said.
“I told them what I felt and they seemed a bit flat by my God did they start quick.
“It’s a long season and we’ve started OK. We’ve pulled back some points that I thought we were short of.
“We’ve got five to go in the mini-cycle of 12 games I’ve spoken about and we’re not far off where I wanted us to be.
“We’ll get the boys in, work hard and we’ll look forward to the next one.”
Luton boss Nathan Jones says he may have to shift his focus after conceding another early goal at Doncaster.
The Hatters have earned the ‘comeback kings’ tag in League One after rescuing points from losing positions.
But Jones says he may have to forgo worrying about conceding goals and concentrate his efforts on how Luton react.
“Maybe we’re making too big a thing of it,” he said.
“Maybe I need to just say ‘whatever happens, happens’ and just go out, relax and play.
“I had a text message off someone earlier today saying if we sort the first-half performances out then we’ll be fine.
“It took us six minutes to go behind and then one minute in the second half to go behind again.
“We can’t keep doing that. We must have professionalism there to know you need to start well.
“We try to impact them for a good start, to get the first goal and say if we do that then we don’t lose.
“We’ve lost this one and we had enough chances to win the game. We just lacked a real quality in the final third, and naivety cost us goals.”
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