Cambridge manager Mark Bonner wants his side to maintain the level of performance set in the 1-0 Sky Bet League Two win over Forest Green.

Paul Mullin missed a penalty before Wes Hoolahan’s goal before half-time won it, keeping Bonner’s men in second place, three points above Rovers, though Forest Green have two games in hand.

“That’s the level that we’ve hit that we’ve got to try and maintain, because there was parts of the performance today that were outstanding,” Bonner said.

“Particularly in the first half. We were brilliant with a real energy, a real intensity, good pressing, used the ball well, caused lots of problems. We definitely deserved to go in leading, and perhaps should have been further ahead.

“It’s an important three points, it’s a good result, maybe it gives us some belief against the top sides that we’ve got coming up, but for us it’s nine more of them.

“We’ve got to keep finding our best levels as often as we can. It was a really good team performance, and some excellent individual ones in there as well.

“They’re a really good side and it’s no surprise they’re there, and they’ll win a lot of games between now and the end of the season.

“As the game goes on they get more and more attacking players on the pitch.

“They cause you problems and find spaces in between you, and when they get moving forward and find the space and stretch the pitch it’s hard to contain them. We found that a little bit difficult in the early part of the second half for a spell, until we blocked it out and were able to see it out.

“We needed that off the back of a really busy run. We’ve had a week on the training ground and it showed. It’s very similar when we’ve done that in previous times, we’ve really put in a good performance on Saturday. Our aim is we do the same next week with a full week up to Carlisle.

“It’s worth the same number of points as the Oldham game, so it’s no bigger (win) than any other in that respect. Maybe it gives you some confidence that ahead of the games where we’ve got to play a lot of the top teams that we can compete with them.”

Forest Green boss Mark Cooper felt his side were way off the pace in the first half, while singling out goalscorer Hoolahan for praise.

“I feel a little bit disappointed because we wasted 45 minutes really,” Cooper rued. “If you do that against a good team you ask for trouble. Cambridge were miles better than us in the first half.

“They got the goal so they had that to protect, and then we had to change things at half time. We changed personnel, changed shape, and we were a lot better in the second half but it shouldn’t take being 1-0 down to perform. We need to perform from the start and we were really poor in the first half.

“We can’t waste the amount of time we did today waiting for things to happen, we need to make them happen ourselves.

On Hoolahan’s goal, Cooper said “He went past about four players. We didn’t have that energy to block him off or stand across him.

“He’s 38 years old and I think he’s just gone up the tunnel, he gave his kit to their kitman, said ‘fold that up for me for next week’. He was that good. He didn’t even break sweat. We can’t stand off players with that quality.

“My teamtalk before the game was really simple. If you don’t run and fight, tackle, head, kick, more than the opposition then very, very rarely do you win a game. For 45 minutes we didn’t do any of that.”