Despite a terrible run of defeats, the noises coming out of Doncaster Rovers are not ones of doom and gloom.
Donny slipped into the bottom three of the Coca-Cola Championship after their fifth successive defeat, at home to Sheffield United on Tuesday, but manager Sean O'Driscoll found plenty of cause for optimism after the derby setback.
He said: "We did
n't put the ball in the back of the net, but I'm pleased with the performance.
"I thought that our discipline was really good, which it had to be.
"They are the foundations that you need to keep whether you're playing good, bad or indifferent or winning or losing games.
"We need to keep those to give us the platform to play and we have got to keep going. If we had hung our heads we may as well have walked off the pitch.
"We tried to do the things that were right and, on another day, we would have scored two or three. We have to dust ourselves down and move on."
After a solid start to life in the second tier of English football, Rovers' recent run of results has seen them slide down the table.
A goal in each half for Sheffield United – an own goal from Gareth Roberts in the first and Stephen Quinn's sweet strike in the second – proved the difference between two sides with contrasting ambitions this campaign.
But Donny chairman John Ryan insisted that Rovers were a cut above and deserved to get something out of the game.
"At half-time I thought it should have been three or 4-1 to us but instead we go into the break one down, which was unbelievable considering the balance of play," Ryan said.
"It was a very unfortunate own goal, hitting the post and then going in.
"We cut Sheffield United to ribbons in my estimation – we hit the underside of the bar and created four or five great opportunities.
"You've got to put them in and if we had gone in at 3-1 I would have been a little disappointed, so to go in a goal down was almost unbelievable."
Scoring goals looks to be the only problem for Rovers, with the Keepmoat Staium outfit side only finding the back of the net four times in nine games.
But Rovers chief Ryan said he is more than willing to invest in a forward if Sean O'Driscoll asks for backing.
"It's the manager's decision, not mine," said Ryan.
"We always to try and back the manager as best we can and, at the end of the day, bringing in players is the manager's decision."
The full article contains 450 words and appears in Yorkshire Sport newspaper.
