FOREST Green Rovers manager Mark Cooper praised his side after they ended a ten-match winless streak with victory over League Two high-flyers Coventry City on Tuesday evening.

And, while Forest Green are still in the division’s relegation zone along with Chesterfield, they are now just two points of leaping over Port Vale and climbing the league.

Keanu Marsh-Brown grabbed the solitary goal in Rovers’ 1-0 win over Coventry, who have now dropped to eighth in the table, at the Ricoh Arena and, despite an astonishing seven minutes of injury time at the end of the match, they held on for a first away win in the Football League.

Under-pressure Cooper hopes that this will kick-start Forest Green’s revival. He said: “My belief has never wavered. When you lose football games, everything gets a bit tense and it is just you start hacking the ball clear and want to get over the line.

“We needed something to cling onto and hopefully that is it. At some point, we had to win a game of football and tonight was our night and the players were fantastic.

“They really did the club proud tonight and I am really pleased for them.

“The message has been to get a few shots off and we did. We had a few potshots we were unlucky with and Keanu has managed to get one that squirms through the keeper’s hands but I thought we had two definite penalties in there as well. Towards the end, the one with Omar was a blatant penalty but it was never going to be easy for us. Nobody was going to give us a victory and we had to really earn it.

“We earned it tonight with seven, maybe eight minutes, of injury time as well.

“You feel that the god’s are conspiring against you when that happens, like they did at Notts County, but we stood firm.

“And a special mention to the goalkeeper (Brad Collins) as well. I thought he was outstanding.”

It will give Forest Green impetus going into their third game in a week on Saturday when they travel to Stevenage, who have replaced Coventry in the play-off places after Tuesday’s result.

Meanwhile, Forest Green will have to be on their mettle in November to progress in the FA Cup after they were drawn against National League leaders Macclesfield Town on the weekend of November 3-6.