Cheltenham Town manager Mark Yates after the 5-0 home win over Swindon Town:
I probably feared we’d be on the end of a scoreline like that after I saw Swindon win 3-0 at Chesterfield, but the lads have done exactly what we asked.
It was pretty obvious what we were going to do from the start and I think they’ve got some fabulous footballers. They’re so fluid that we just didn’t want to get cut apart, so we had a bit of a gameplan that we would drop off and we’ve scored goals at the right times and that’s helped us. It was a good convincing win and we are glad to be through to the next round.
Byron Harrison has had his critics all season, including at the fans' forum on Thursday night, but we know there’s a player there. We know because we see what he does on a daily basis at training and the supporters don’t always see what he does on a Saturday.
Today, John Marquis was a bit unlucky he didn’t start, they’ve got a really young team and I thought Byron would fancy it today. I thought he would be able to impose himself against their back three, his presence, his size and his willingness to receive the ball with his back to goal. He caused problems all game and I just said to him there the best goal was the fifth one. Someone’s anticipated something, we practice it every Friday religiously about deliveries from set-pieces and then people anticipating something else, anticipating a tap-in. Defenders make mistakes and it was nice to see one of players anticipating it and roll the ball into an empty net instead of having to score worldies like Matt Richards did.
That’s what I was hoping for and that’s what we got, we’ve got to find a key to getting it every single week. He’s a six foot three quick strong mobile he’s got a bit of everything, he can head it, set up Terry for the goal and he’s a good lad. Sometimes he doesn’t believe in himself, when he plays like that he’s a threat to anyone.
(The sending off) certainly helped us, I looked at it at half-time and saw it once, literally. By the letter of the law, he was through, he was the last man whether or not he was running through on goal I would question, but we’ve had a couple like that go against us. I felt that it could have made the game harder for us, the discipline of the players was so good that nothing changed, it obviously made things easier for us and was a factor as to why we scored more goals.
I felt we were a real threat today, we had a good bit of play down the left, Craig’s (Braham-Barrett) done well to get that great little trick on the full back, it’s nice to see a good slid ball across the face of goal and be someone there to get on the end of it. I don’t know if Byron went to ground to score it but it was nice. We’ve scored some pleasing goals that we want to see more of. Matt’s strike was a wonder strike we’ve had a couple of great efforts within that phase of play as well. There’s some really pleasing stuff to the supporters, we’ve had a few moans the other day and the chairman and myself have had to convince people why they should pay a premium price ticket. I hope they did come down, they’d have seen their team do really well and progress to the next round and I’m sure the chairman will be happy, we’ve got a happy dressing room in there.