Gary Caldwell hails character as Exeter back to winning ways after cup thumping

Exeter manager Gary Caldwell hailed the character of his side as they responded to last week’s 10-1 FA Cup defeat at Manchester City with a dominant 3-0 League One win over Stevenage at St James Park.

Following a goalless first half, Jayden Wareham opened the scoring from the penalty spot after Reece Cole was felled in the box by Taye Ashby-Hammond.

Ethan Brierley’s delightfully placed finish made it 2-0 before Ukrainian winger Timur Tutierov, who signed on loan from Sunderland on Friday, completed the scoring in stoppage time.

“I thought we were excellent,” Caldwell said. “Right from the start, I thought we controlled the game. The shape caused them so many problems, when they tried to press, we always had a free player. The only disappointing thing in the first half was that we didn’t score.

“I thought we created good moments and chances to score. We were a wee bit wasteful in the final third, our final pass, and final action wasn’t where it can be, and the message at half-time was keep going, keep doing the right things, be relentless.

“I thought, second half, we lost a bit of control, but still looked a threat in any time we went forward. We looked like we could score goals and scored three, we probably could have scored more, but lost a bit of control that I think we need to be better at and as we always say, when we win, lose or draw, we always review, we always want to get better.

“We’ve spoken about making this ground a fortress and at the moment, we’re doing that and making the points ours.”

Stevenage boss Alex Revell felt his side were well off the pace and they need to get back to what served them well earlier in the season.

“It was unacceptable from start to finish really, for us,” Revell said. “I lay my hat on that we outwork and outrun opponents. They outran us today, they outfought us and it was a really, really poor day, just in terms of the basics and competing.

“We will look back at today for sure because that’s not us at all, that’s not our type of performance. It causes anger, it causes frustration and when you’re winning you just turn up and you deliver. But today, it was one of those performances where I looked from start to finish and we were nowhere near it.

“We have to look at it and we have to stick together, we have to pull together and realise what we’re good at. We’re good at the intensity, we’re being aggressive, we are good at playing forward, running forwards.

“The goals we conceded are really poor and we have conceded too many goals recently. We’re a team based on hard work, clean sheets and at the other end taking opportunities and we didn’t do that at all today.”