Valuable Point For Brown

Manager Phil Brown has said that he felt it was a valuable point that we picked up against Oxford United yesterday.

Young Jack Payne was making his first league start for Southend and he again found himself on the scoresheet, before a later penalty for them got them a share of the spoils.

Speaking to the Official Site with many feeling it was a case of two points dropped given the position we were in, the gaffer was pretty happy with a point.

‘I thought it was a great point to tell you the truth. In the end, especially in the second half I thought Oxford were by far the better team and the reason for that is because they got on the end of things far more than we did.’

Brown goes on to say that in the first half we had a plan and stuck to it well, but then for ‘some unknown reason’ Oxford really upped themselves to a new level and we just struggled to cope with their second wind.

‘We stopped playing, the reason for that I have no idea, but we stopped playing and they came to the party. If we hung on to 1-0 our season would kick off even if we didn’t perform well, but the bottom line is we got a point out of a game and it could have quite easily been none. Dan Bentley pulled off a couple of great saves and we got something from the game.’

Payne of course came in for special credit and the manager admitted that it had been a big week for him and he felt tiredness was starting to show in his legs and that’s why he substituted him but whilst he was on the pitch he was ‘magnificent.’