Westley: ‘We’ve already been doing our planning for the play-offs’

Graham Westley says Stevenage still have improvements to make if they are to get to the level that he wants them to reach.

Boro booked their place in the League 2 play-offs with a win over Carlisle United thanks to Dean Parrett’s strike just after half-time.

Westley says the composure his side showed on the ball was pleasing, but added that there’s no point in simply being satisfied in reaching the play-offs. He wants his side to continue getting better and win promotion back to League 1.

“It was a good team goal, the team crafted it well. Deano arrived in the right area and took the chance early as we’d talked about and we’ve ended up winning the game 1-0 and winning the three points,” the Boro boss said.

“It puts us in sixth for certain and it’s a commendable enough finish, but in all honesty there’s no point being in it if you’re not in it to win it.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do because if we stay at the level we’re at we won’t get where we want to get to.”

On his side’s performance, Westley added: “In fairness we probably knew the play-offs were going to be there for us before [the game].

“We’ve been playing ok and been building towards those play-offs, so today isn’t any sort of landmark for us really.

“We came into the game trying to be a better team than we have previously. We showed a lot more composure in possession of the ball, a lot more ability to play on and stay on the game.

“It’s good that we start to get ready for the play-offs, albeit we’ve been doing our planning long before now.”