York City comeback to beat Bristol Rovers in a five goal thriller, while other newly promoted side Rochdale were thumped 3-0 by Newport.
The Minstermen had fallen behind when Clinton Mola found the net after 30 minutes, but York hit back in the second half, with Alex Newby and Harry Boyes scoring in the space of three minutes to make make it 2-1 with half an hour remaining.
Tommy Leigh scored from the spot to make it 2-2, but York quickly ended Rovers’ hopes of a comeback, Harry Boyes scoring an 80th minute winner. A much more encouraging result the 2-0 Carabao Cup defeat to Crawley.
It wasn’t the start Rochdale wanted in the league however, goals from Kyle Cameron and Shaquille Gwengwe just before half time had Newport cruising, then Yahya Bamba sealed the three points on the 91st minute.
Rochdale drew their Carabao Cup Preliminary Round tie 2-2 with Tranmere, before Dale won 2-1 in what was described as one of the worst penalty shootout fans had seen.
Next up? York are away to Rotherham, who lost 2-1 to Cheltenham. Bristol Rovers host Newport. Rochdale are at home to Crawley, who lost 1-0 to Crewe in a dramatic game of football.
York’s Scott Lindsey said: Performance wise, I thought we were excellent today. I thought we really dominated the game, especially in that first half. I would have liked to have had more attacking actions probably in the first half. I think we only had one shot on target, but we had 78% of the ball, so that needs to marry up.
“But I was really pleased with with the reaction of the players coming from behind as well. We showed real fight, grit, determination to win that game. I thought we were really really good today. I thought it was outstanding performance.
On the overall feeling towards the players at half time: The belief was probably still there. Keep playing. Just keep playing. Keep doing what we’re doing. We look great. I thought we were great. I just felt that maybe we can ask more questions of them in the final third. Can we make their keeper do a bit more work than we did? And we certainly did that in the second half.
On the second half: Yeah, we were good from an attacking point of view. I thought we got down the sides of them many times, and we found ourselves in some really good areas and scored some great goals. I’m really pleased with with the outcome of today cuz sometimes you can play well and not get what you deserve and we got that today.”
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Bristol Rovers’ Steve Evans said, as per the club website: Yeah, listen, if you go away from home in any game in the football league and you make big individual errors, you are going to concede goals, aren’t you?
I think we were second best in a lot of areas all over the pitch for long spells today. But the game always comes down to goals, and it’s easily individual errors for each of the goals we conceded. Bad individual errors as well.“So, individuals will take culpability when we break it down to the boys on Monday. We never lacked effort and spirit and trying. You know, we went in front against the run of play, totally. But then we probably had our best spell for ten, 15 minutes, and we had a little spell again after we equalised in the second half with the penalty from Tommy.
But you can’t defend like that and win football matches. It’s just not right. I think we were weak individually in defensive areas. We had some really good performers. I thought Keenan Gough was sensational, like head and shoulders above anything in the whole of York.
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Rochdale’s Ian Watson said, as per the club website: “It’s a really tough day.
“We spoke about what this league was going to offer us, and we showed that we’ve got a lot of learning and growth to get to where we want to be, and we need to do that really quickly.
“We conceded from three set pieces, two on the second phase as well, so we need to address that on Monday.
“I thought in the second half we improved and played with more bravery. We played in areas that we spoke about during the week that we thought would hurt them.
“I thought we gained more momentum, but I don’t want to paper over any cracks – we weren’t good enough. It’s not an acceptable performance, and it’s one that won’t happen again.
“What’s frustrating is that it’s nothing we didn’t expect. We knew what was going to come, and we need to work out why we weren’t able to deal with it. We have to understand why we allowed this game to happen like it did.”
Newport’s Hayden Mullins said, as per the club website: A couple more goals would have been nice. I think, you know, the way we set up and the way we wanted to try and approach today.
I think the boys deserve massive credit because they went about their jobs really well today.
Noise was fantastic, but I think we know the players know that we’ve got more than something to shout about.
On the pitch, we’ve got to be more aggressive in what we’re doing out of possession and, you know, we set about trying to get the ball back pretty quickly.”
We just felt like they were growing into it, so we needed to put some more pressure on their back line. We knew if we applied pressure in the right areas, we’d get the ball back.
But, yeah, the noise in here was brilliant.
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