AFC Liverpool manager Chris Anderson was delighted to see his side advance into the next round of the FA Vase as they went into Christmas on the back of a 2-2 draw.
Luke Stephens’ strike was enough to see the non-league Reds past Pilkington and through to the fourth round of the Vase where they will travel to Abbey Hey.
It takes the to within four ties of Wembley as Anderson became the only manager in the club’s history to take them to that stage.
“Scrappy, it was just a battle, it was one of those games. A cup tie. That was it,” he told Off The Park.
“There was no real quality from either side, they made us work, we made them work it just didn’t create great chances either of us. The most important thing was getting the win.
“I would say so [win was deserved] I thought second half we were better than the first. I think it was deserved to go through.
“From a personal point of view, I always wanted to break a stat or whatever so this is obviously one of them that I’ve been able to do.
“I don’t think we played particularly well in the first half, showed them too much respect they have a very very good side. I’d say before the game, they were the best team we’ve played in the league this season, I don’t think they played their best. But to go 2-0 down and draw, we showed character, personality and resilience.”
Days later, Kyle Schorah’s second-half double earned them a valuable point to high-flying Wythenshawe Town.
After restoring parity, it was one-way traffic with the hosts holding on in the end for the draw.
It takes them into the festive period in 14th, eight points adrift of the relegation zone.
But Anderson feels had the game carried on for slightly longer, one team would’ve left with all three points.
Adding: “If there was a few minutes, I think we were the only team to get the winner but we looked at the schedule for December and we wanted to look at where we were picking points up and stuff and we got what we went for.
“You go to win, we thought a draw away from home on a Wednesday night in Manchester, it’d be a good result against a team in the top three.
“That’s something that we’ve worked on over the last 18 months – two years. That’s something we needed something to get better at and I said at the half time break ‘don’t die and you’ve got to show your resilience now’ they did that and they got what they needed to out of it.
“We had three clean sheets out of six, which we waited 30-odd games for so we shown we can defend and keep clean sheets. I think the form overall has been alright, I think we can play better but we’ve done enough to get points and I think we’re in decent form.”
