Gallen lauds Portsmouth’s away performance after comfortable win over Rochdale

Posted Sunday, November 24, 2019 by PA

Portsmouth assistant manager Joe Gallen praised his side’s performance in their 3-0 victory against Rochdale at the Crown Oil Arena.

A brace of goals early in either half from Ronan Curtis, plus a late third from Ryan Williams, secured the points for the visitors.

Kenny Jackett’s men were penned inside their own half for long periods as Dale enjoyed the lion’s share of possession but Pompey were clinical on the break, leaving the home side shell-shocked.

“It was a really good away day for us, we’ve won, scored three goals and could have scored more and we’ve not conceded and it’s been a while since we kept a clean sheet on the road,” said assistant manager Joe Gallen.

“When you come away from home you don’t expect to have it all your own way and there are times when you have to defend, to sit in, and concede.

“We are the big club in this division, along with Sunderland, and teams see us as a free hit. Rochdale played very well, very offensively with just one player at the back while everyone else was attacking, and that caused a lot of problems for us.

“At the break we just felt that if we sat in, intercepted and broke better that we would be able to get more chances and as it turned out, that’s the way it went in the second half.”

Curtis opened the scoring in the 15th minute when he connected with John Marquis’ run into the area and flashed a shot past Robert Sanchez.

Rekeil Pyke went close to equalising when his looping header flew over Craig MacGillivray but clipped the outside of the post.

And Dale were dealt another sucker punch two minutes into the second half when Ryan Williams teed up Curtis to apply another clinical finish.

MacGillivray had to be at his best to prevent Callum Camps from reducing the arrears, pulling off a magnificent save to protect his side’s clean sheet.

And the result was wrapped up in the 88th minute when substitute Brett Pitman fed Williams and he slid home the third goal.

Dale boss Brian Barry-Murphy said: “I thought it was a difficult game in terms of the scoreline but for large parts of the game the players did exactly what I wanted from them, controlling the game and keeping them away from our goal.

“Parts of our work towards their goal were not as we had planned or practised, but that was partly down to their good defending, and some of our skills going forward were not quite at the level that we wanted, but everything else was pretty much perfect from us until we got into the final third.

“Their goals changed the game, obviously gave them something to hold onto and they are very good at that.

“In summary, they were clinical and we weren’t.”