Mark Bonner believed his Cambridge side were deserved winners after their fightback against Harrogate.

The hosts struck twice in the last 20 minutes, either side of a red card for Harrogate’s Lloyd Kerry, to win 2-1 and climb to third in Sky Bet League Two following a fourth successive home win in all competitions.

Asked about the comeback, Bonner said he was pleased “with the second half but also with most of the first half.”

He said: “After the goal we were very dominant with the ball. In the first half there wasn’t enough of an end product to our attacking play, or we shot or crossed too early rather than have an extra pass.

“So all we needed to do in the second half was be confident, have a bit more conviction about us, make good choices with the ball, and we just kept turning the screw.

“We kept going up levels in the second half, very dominant. It’s probably one of our best performances with the ball. We deservedly won the game.

“Any time you can get consecutive wins in this league it gives you a real chance of consolidating in the area of the league we want to compete in. We haven’t done that for a while.

“We knew it was an opportunity to get that today after last week and you’ve got to try and put these games together, one on top of the other. I asked the boys to dance with me today and they danced well today.”

Simon Weaver said his Harrogate side’s quality in the game slipped after they had gone ahead.

He explained: “I’m disappointed because we got off to a great start.

“We took the game to a good team in Cambridge, got the goal that we wanted after some great work by the two forwards and really well finished by Jack Muldoon.

“But it was almost like it was a problem to us, going up. It’s something to protect then and get on the back foot, rather than playing our way and keeping striving forward and going for more goals.

“We were causing them problems but that ceased to exist once we were a goal up and in a great position.

“We’ve still got to believe in ourselves, keeping playing passing football. There wasn’t the same hunger for the ball.

“We wanted to really compete with a very good team. Credit to Cambridge, they came back into the game and backed themselves and passed the ball well.”

On the red card, Weaver added: “Lloyd’s apologised straight away and he deserves a lot of respect for everything he’s done for the club, so it’s an incident he regretted.

“I’ve been there myself, you never stop learning in this game, so he’ll not do that again.”