Bury ended 2024 in sublime style running out 5-2 winners over local rivals Prestwich, Dave McNabb spoke to the club to give us his thoughts on the game.
Dave McNabb: “I think so, I think we’ve dominated the ball, obviously when they equalise there’s always those nerves set in, but we’ve dominated with and without possession, with and without the ball pretty much for the full 90 minutes, similar to the second half on Boxing Day, complete domination, but there were spells where it was frustrating, very frustrating, but honestly the overwhelming sort of feelings of pride, I think obviously people come to the game and they watch the performance and don’t really understand some of the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes, I mean there’s 7 or 8 of those lads who have gone off to sick bed today and they’ve come and they’ve battled and they’ve been warriors and it hasn’t been brilliant, it hasn’t been perfect, the performance, but again, at that time of the year there’s a lot of stuff going round, like I said a few of them are in a really bad way, so they’ve come here, they’ve shown the quality in spells and we’ve got a comfortable 5-2 win.”
He then added to his point regarding ill players by saying “I’d be surprised if he’d be able to get up the stairs, I’ll be honest, he was struggling towards the back end, DJ [Pedro] struggling, he blew up and he said I can’t carry on anymore and he felt dizzy, he thought he was going to fall over and Rusty [Stepans] was the only really attacking player that we had on the bench, so honestly we were down to bare bones and the work ethic and what the lads have put in is second to none.”
Dave then spoke to us about today’s changes to the starting 11, he said: “Absolutely, it was almost like the XI least sick people going to start and trying to fit them into positions a little bit, so yeah, it’s been tough, it’s been a tough few days but on reflection we’ve had three games in eight days, two against the top two teams in the league and one against obviously a potential banana skin after all the emotion that was on Boxing Day, so we picked up seven points, I think anyone in their right mind would have thought that coming into that run, obviously we’re disappointed the way the Rammy one turned out. If you look at the stats and the way we played, I come away from thinking we dominated the game. Then you see some comments on socials and whatever else, but honestly the second half we’ve had 82% possession, we’ve had 16 shots, they’ve had one, we’ve dominated the ball, 330 odd passes to their, they completed 20 passes in the second half, so we’ve dominated the game, we deserve to win the game, should have had nine points but we’ve got seven, we’ll take it and we’ll keep going.”
He then spoke about whether it is a problem regarding the amount of goals conceded in recent games, with him saying “Absolutely, I think when you break them down, either individual errors or a catalogue of individual errors, so we talked about the two from Rammy before the game, not necessarily calling people out but almost letting them see the goals and understand where there’s three or four mistakes in the lead up in terms of the first phase and the second phase of the goals, if we can stop one of those and make the one right decision rather than the wrong decision and we stop the goals going in, it just feels like we’re at that moment where every time we make a mistake, we’re being punished and sometimes it can feel like that, early in the season when we were coming away with 3-0 and 2-0 we probably weren’t being punished but that’s the way of the world, sometimes the pendulum swings that way but ultimately we’ve got to make sure we’re more solid defensively, I think keeping the ball is key to that but again we’ve shown our attacking intent today.”
Dave then looked ahead to the second half of the season in 2025 saying “ think we’ve got 16, 17 games left, as it stands, all Saturdays, no more midweek games hopefully, hopefully, no more get called off and what that gives us is contact time, I’ve said it a million times before, this group when it gets quality contact time and training will flourish and I think you’ll see the best of this side in the months to come.”
