30 January 2021

Cambridge boss Mark Bonner delighted with ‘massive’ win as leaders stay clear

30 January 2021

Cambridge boss Mark Bonner described his side’s victory over Crawley as “a massive three points.”

The Sky Bet League Two leaders completed an unbeaten January, in which time they have only dropped four points in six games, with a 3-1 victory.

Full-back Kyle Knoyle netted a spectacular strike moments before half-time after both sides had scored early goals, before Wes Hoolahan sealed the points late on to leave the U’s three points clear at the top.

“It keeps the unbeaten run going, and importantly January as a month has been really good to us,” Bonner said.

“It was a big game, a big performance at times against a really good side. You only need to look at their goal to see the sort of execution they’ve got with the ball. We knew we had to be good without the ball and carry our own threat.

“At times it was a really open game, end to end, and we needed to connect it a little bit more. We were clinical.

“As the first half went on we started to have more and more threat on the game and I thought there was a second goal coming for us.

“The timing of it’s massive, to go in 2-1 up. What a second goal it was, I didn’t know he could do that, it was a great hit. It gave us a little bit of encouragement and confidence going in at half-time.

“It’s been a real squad effort this month, it’s been a grind of a month and our results have been class. I can’t fault the boys at all, their attitude and work ethic throughout the month has been unbelievable really. We’ve come out of the month unbeaten with some brilliant results.”

Crawley midfielder Jake Hessenthaler quickly cancelled out Joe Ironside’s early opener for the hosts, but strikes from Knoyle and Hoolahan ensured the points would be staying with Cambridge.

Crawley boss John Yems felt his side were deservedly beaten.

“We weren’t good enough on the day,” he said. “We got beaten by the better side, a little bit bashed up, but that’s the way it goes. It’s a tough game, they’re top of the league. We want to win games but on the day we weren’t good enough.

“You could tell we haven’t trained. We haven’t had time on the training pitch, there was a lot of things but that still doesn’t determine things, it’s the players that win you games.

“Did they score a good goal? Did we help them score a goal? Yes, I think we did. By the same token they were bad goals for us to give away, they were good goals for them to score. We still had chances, we came out second half and had a go at them.

“If we perform like that we’ll finish nearer the bottom than we will the top. That’s still a good season.”

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