Stevenage boss Evans praises ‘dominant’ second-half show

Stevenage manager Steve Evans praised a “dominant” second-half performance from his side after their ruthless 5-0 thrashing of fellow League Two high-flyers Barrow.

Second-placed Boro’s five goals at the Lamex Stadium came from four shots on target – and an own goal – as they emphatically prevented their fourth-placed visitors from closing the gap on the automatic promotion places.

Evans said: “I thought we played in spells in the first half and in all of the second half we played with a real application to win the ball, to pass it around, move them around and I think we did that with aplomb.

“We had a number of individual and a team collective performance that we would describe as outstanding.

“We introduced some players and they helped create some great movement, some great passages of play and to be fair it was as dominant as second-half performance as you could wish to see.

“There’s always going to be a counter attack with the way Barrow play, they’ve got really good players at the top end of the pitch.

“They’ll go away and lick their wounds and bounce back, but we’ve just got to take this level of performance and see if we can replicate it in the big game next week, here against Mansfield.”

The only goal of a tight first half came when Jake Reeves was given time to line up a superb long-range strike that swerved past a helpless Paul Farman.

A poor clearance by Farman presented Jamie Reid with the chance to double Stevenage’s lead with a perfectly-weighted lob before Dan Sweeney made the game safe by heading in Reeves’ corner.

Luke Norris then made it four for the Boro from the penalty spot before Barrow’s Tyrell Warren completed the rout by heading another Reeves corner into his own net.

Barrow boss Pete Wild said: “We’ve gifted them goals, absolutely gifted them.

“In open play, how many goals have they created? Have they broken us down? No.

“They’ve hit a worldie that we should do better from. Second goal, we’ve passed it to their centre-forward, so they’re goals we can prevent. It’s not as though Stevenage have opened us up.

“It’s massively removed from how we’ve played this season, but it doesn’t help, the types of goals that they’ve scored.

“They’ve never given us a chance to get a foothold in the game and we come away very frustrated because the goals were a disaster.

“They’re all individual errors, aren’t they? I have to say I don’t really think Stevenage have opened us up and really punished us with good play. We’ve just gifted them goals at silly times.

“Sometimes football doesn’t go your way and tonight certainly hasn’t gone our way.”