David Artell believes that his men standing up and ‘being men’ made sure we protected our 1-0 win over Walsall on Saturday. Eddie Nolan gave us the lead just after the hour mark and although Walsall threw everything at it in the closing stages, Darrell Clarke’s side did not conjure up any real genuine chances to put our advantage at risk.

Artell was pleased with the way his players stood up in what he described as a ‘horrible’ second half.

The boss told us: “We had 11 men, 12, 13 men who have stood up to everything and that has won us the game. There wasn’t too many highlights but it was a hard fought 1-0 win and we defended properly and defended our box really well.

“That is the most pleasing thing and I told them afterwards that we are going to play well every week. We didn’t play as much football as we would have liked but we had to really defend well because Walsall were direct and played high balls into our box.

“It was a bit stop/start second half and I lost count of the number of fouls there were. It became scrappy and a bit of a horrible second half, but we have won 1-0, got that cleans-sheet and got the three points.

The boss added: “That say 1-0 is the best score line in football. I would prefer 3-0 because I want to live beyond 60 but I was really pleased with what we did off the ball.”