Shaun Derry admitted that his side need to strike a balance between attack and defence after their 1-0 win over Stevenage.

Yet again the U’s looked solid, if not overtly threatening, until the game opened up in the second half.

The substitutes, all attacking, helped and Jevani Brown finally unlocked Stevenage's defence was a pass which was finished by Uche Ikpeazu.

But the head coach said that, while the goal scoring record needs to be improved – and they could be perhaps play a more aesthetically pleasing brand of football – until that point they need to make sure they are hard to beat.

“Of course it does and we know, I’ve spoken about it [the goalscoring record improving] at length,” he said.

“Can we be a little bit more pleasing on the eye, can we score more goals, can we have more chances and up until that point where we can get the balance right, we have to be hard to beat. And for us to be hard to beat, we have to keep clean sheets.

His team had to dig in to win on Saturday, as they did to pick up a point on Tuesday, with Stevenage having a spell at the beginning of the second half when they increased the tempo a little bit.

And, after an admittedly “intense” week, Derry praised the spirit that was on display.

“I tell you what, we have got a spirit, we have got a resolve and a dedication and a determination to eachother in that group and that takes time to develop and sometimes you have to go through some pretty hard times in football to gather that strength to get a result like we did today” he said.

“We’ve had a pretty intense week on the back of Luton so to get two clean sheets, and two results on the back of it, I’m delighted.”