On the three points...
After about 20 mins I was dreading this press conference but the way the game finished, we've got a lot of positives come out of it. It was an interesting first game for me. Belief from the players (won us the game). They can get it wrong at times but they're incredibly brave. There are a lot of young players there and they stuck to what they’ve been asked to do and that’s what it was down to: belief from the players.
On equalising before half time...
It's massive. It changes everybody’s mindset when you go in 2-2 instead of 2-0 or 2-1. It’s a massive difference psychologically. The message (at half time) was to continue to do the things we did well that created chances and they took that into the second half.
On the performance...
When the players are out there they have decisions to make and sometimes they get it wrong. Those things are highlighted. It’s very easy to say "that didn’t work, let's change everything we do." We understand that the crowd get impatient at times and it's down to us as a group of staff and a group of players to believe in what we do on a daily basis. We moved the ball from side to side and opened the other team up and created chances for the full backs to get crosses in the box and created space for people like Fabien (Robert), Jon (Obika) and Nicky (Ajose) to work by stretching the pitch. Then when Southend have to react, there’s space at the back and you’ve seen that with Jon and Nicky running at their backline. Teams are always going to try and play on the fact that physically we may not be the strongest and there will be individual battles lost so we’ll combat that by controlling the lions’ share of the football.
On Jon Obika and Nicky Ajose...
Jon is a fantastic player. I still don’t think we’ve seen the best of him. We see it quite a lot in training but Jon will benefit from a run of games in the side. Nicky was here before and he’s a goal machine. He's so driven by goals. They’re quite a partnership, I think.