An excellent performance and a well deserved victory for Rovers. I thought we completely outplayed Dagenham today, which shows just how much we have improved in the last few weeks. We created chances throughout, were strong at the back and restricted The Daggers to scraps, their first shot on goal coming in the 66th minute.
Harris was brilliant as a makeshift right back, but the injuries did affect us insofar as we were lightweight in midfield without the ball after Hughes went off, with Jennings and Norburn as the central pairing. However, the back four were so strong we were never really threatened. We seemed to play a more direct game today and Cook and Norwood worked well together, the former winning a lot of flick-ons and the latter getting in behind the Dagenham defence on numerous occasions.
Individually, there were some terrific performances. Both centre backs had good games, with McNulty in really good form at the moment. Harris was excellent out of position, and Ridehalgh produced some great deliveries from the left hand side. Norburn had a relatively quiet game, aside from his superb strike for the second goal. Both DMH and Cole were excellent when they came on, the former with some terrific bursting runs, the latter with some sublime touches of skill: the back heel in the first half and the jinking run which left three Dagenham players for dead in the second were a delight to watch. Keeping those two beyond January is going to be really important to us I think.
However, my man of the match was James Norwood who worked tirelessly, and got things going with the opening goal. Good to see a decent crowd in PP as well and the atmosphere was excellent.
We are now up to our highest position in the league since the second game of the season and look a confident, well-organised outfit. Onwards and upwards.