Painter hails deserved points for battling Bears

The Bears boss admitted he used the reverse fixture to motivate his players prior to kick-off.

With YMCA recording a healthy tally of 54 league goals so far this term, the home side surprisingly reduced them to drawing a blank.

Painter said: “I said to the lads, ‘YMCA are the best side we have played all season’. We were lucky down there; we certainly were not lucky on Saturday and fully deserved the three points.

“We worked harder than them, really. James (Fisher) only made one save in the whole game, which speaks volumes of the back four.”

The Bears boss also hailed his team’s efficiency in what has been an injury-ravaged season. He added: “With our best 11 on the pitch, we can beat anybody in the league and Saturday showed that. I’ve always said, ‘if we can get players back we can turn a corner’; getting Tiago (Andrade) back is a massive help for us.

“We were still missing five players on Saturday, key players, these are not fringe players, so you look at it like that and we still beat YMCA 2-0.

“Our aim at the start of the season was to keep our County 1 status, and that hasn’t changed. People keep saying to me ‘Steve, you have to be looking higher than that’, yes, that would be lovely, but you only move up the table by winning football matches.”