Saturday’s 4-1 victory over Arsenal was preceded by a last gasp 2-1 win over Everton and a convincing 4-0 dispatching of Leicester to leave Enzo Maresca’s men one point outside the top four.
And the skipper is not surprised by this good form, after he and the players laid down a marker after a patchy start to the new season.
“I think we dominated and should probably have got two wins out of our first two games against Derby and Blackburn… after those games there was a feeling of disappointment,” he said.
“But after the games I just said to the boys when everyone was in the changing rooms that we can’t let this happen again.
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“Since then, the last three games have been brilliant performances and (we’ve earned) three wins so we can’t really complain, we’ve been much better.”
Despite coming into the game off the back of some excellent displays, we found ourselves a goal down within the opening 6 minutes against Arsenal before visiting goalkeeper Karl Hein was dismissed for bringing down Felix Nmecha moments later.
And while the man advantage may well have helped grind out the win, Egan-Riley insists there was no question of that early setback having a negative impact on the players, even if Hein had not received his marching orders.
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“If we let our heads drop straight away five minutes into the game then we’ve got no chance,” he said of Nikolaj Moller’s opener.
“There’s still 85, 90 minutes left so we just had to keep going and, as we showed, we got the four goals and ended up with the win.”
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Elite Development Squad manager Enzo Maresca described the difficulties that playing against ten men can pose in his post match thoughts, and his captain followed a similar thought process.
Even though the Gunners were forced to put outfield player Taylor Foran between the sticks for the remaining 83 minutes, they sat deep in two banks of four and defended doggedly in a bid to frustrate the Young Blues.
And Egan-Riley reflected that, while it took them some time to suss out a well-oiled Arsenal machine, he was proud that they were eventually able to break through and seal maximum points.
“It’s sometimes harder to play against ten than it is eleven because they just sat back deep,” he said.
“In the first half we should have scored more goals and we had a lot of chances, but in the second half we killed them off and took our chances better so I think it was good.”
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