I thought it was a fair result. You sometimes have to give the opposition credit for making life awkward and Harrogate battled hard today. They were the sharper, more aggressive side in the first half and they defended their eighteen yard box well when we piled on the pressure in the second period.
The first half performance was as poor a showing as we have had for some time, but it is difficult to be too critical of the players given just how consistent we have been in recent weeks. I thought we failed to match Harrogate's workrate and were sloppy in and out of possession. The mistake by Simeu in the first couple of minutes, where he tried to shepherd a ball back to Doohan that was never going to reach him, set the tone. Both he and Turnbull had their poorest halves for us to date, and struggled to deal with Armstrong's physicality. In possession of the ball we got into good areas, but too often the third or fourth pass went astray and attacking moves broke down.
The second half was much better. We demonstrated that we had the superior quality and dominated, with a lot of good approach work down our right side through Morris and Cogley. However, Harrogate won a lot of headers in their own box and defended well and deserved their point.
The two players who did perform consistently for the ninety minutes were Bristow and Cogley, who were both unplayable at times today.
I don't think we can read too much into today's result in relation to the quality of the attacking or creative players. We were not at our best but still took a point away from home against a side that seem to be coming into some form.