Coleman Praise For Taylor

Last updated : 04 April 2004 By Phil Eastman

"Maik is a good player. I wanted to keep him but he's not a number two - he's a number one," Coleman said after the 0-0 draw.

"He wanted to play first-team football and Van der Sar was standing in his way. He was a good servant for us and sat on the bench for two years and kept his mouth shut.

"He is capable of performances like that and that's just the way it works.

"I knew it would be a battle and we went about it a bit different because the pitch was bad and we even had a rugby game on it on Wednesday.

"Our game wasn't as inventive as it could have been and maybe that was my fault as well in a way because I wanted us going forward quicker than normal.

"We had Pearce and McBride on just to try to mix it up but I was disappointed that we had two big strikers on and had chances to cross the ball but didn't."