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Chesterfield throw it away

GOALS HIGHLIGHTS

Another up and down week for Chesterfield then, win away and then mess it all up by losing at home, not only losing, but falling to pieces against a team in Eastleigh that should have been sent home on the end of a sound beating. Thankfully our next 2 matches are away from home, where the team seems to play better, let’s hope that we get points against Bromley and Havant and get closer to safety.

Against Eastleigh Chesterfield were OK in the first half and having scored our only real chance should have made it to half time one goal up, but if you let the opposition have a free cross and don’t challenge for the subsequent header they are going to score. Second half, we scored and it looked plain sailing, then mighty Eastleigh, put an extra man up front, worked harder than Chesterfield in midfield and we crumbled. 

Watch Tom Denton commit a "foul" 

The opposition’s second goal was amateur stuff from our defence and goal keeper and as for their third if you do let someone run 40 yards with the ball and have a free shot, they’ll get a goal. Why none of our team put in a tackle or even committed a foul for the good of the team is a mystery. Certainly John Sheridan put on subs to try and win the game going three up front but taking Robbie Weir off meant there was no-one to protect our back line and that was certainly crucial in the last goal of the game.

After John Sheridan announced post-match that players aren’t listening to him and aren’t doing what he says, it can only mean that he’s busy drawing up a list of who he’s going to get rid of come May. So fans at the Proact are now drawing up their own lists of players that won’t be good enough to be in a team that should challenge for promotion next time around. We still have players on the books, who aren't good enough, signed by the previous three managers, and the biggest culprit of all Guy Branston

Out of contract in 2019 are Reid, Ofuegbu, Weston, Dodds, Barry, George Smith, Anyon, Ugwu, Wakefield, Binnon-Williams, Talbot, Muggleton, Nelson, Fortune and Weir. I couldn’t blame the manager one bit if he got rid of all of them. We have 5 loanees at the club who will probably go back to the clubs who “own” them. 

That would leave 12 players on the books, which looks daunting but it gives John Sheridan an opportunity to bring in maybe 8 players with some quality, or at least with some pace.

Martin Allen indicated at the start of the season that you needed a powerful hard-working team to get out of this division, since he failed to do that, we looked like we were going to get out of the National League at the wrong end, the only decent player he signed was Charlie Carter. It’s now over to John Sheridan to see if he can recruit a decent side for next season.

Club Website
National league goals highlights

Spireites on the up

Chesterfield are now finally heading in the right direction, with a very welcome 3 points away at Fylde. Since Boxing Day when the wheels came off the team under Martin Allen against Solihull Moors, Chesterfield haven’t lost and the sequence of results reads DDDWDWW. John Pemberton put together a side where Robbie Weir sits in front of the defensive line and breaks up the opposition play, John Sheridan continued this and in his first 4 league games we haven’t conceded a goal. OK we lost at home in the Cup against Brackley, but the less said about that the better.

AFC Fylde away

Fylde had their chances on Saturday and we had the woodwork come to our rescue on 2 occasions, but with 3 more points on the board Chesterfield sit in 17^th place. Four or 5 more wins this season and we will be safe and right now the team sit only a mere 19 points off the playoffs, although only the most optimistic fan would place a bet on that happening.

One of the few things there is to like about watching your team in the Vanarama League is the away day experience of going somewhere completely new and experiencing the quirks and eccentricities of the home team. I was rather fond of the stadium announcer at AFC Fylde, yesterday who was a breath of fresh air in these politically correct times. He cheerfully broadcast to the entire ground that someone attending the match had parked their car across a woman’s drive way and if they didn’t remove it within 15 minutes it would be set on fire. I'm not sure who was gong to set it on fire, the club or the woman, but we didn't see the Fire Brigade anywhere round the ground, so maybe the car was shifted. Also a nice tribute to Gordon Banks before the game, who was credited as having started his distinguished career at our club

Also, leading team Solihull Moors, are going to have to build an extra stand or two if they get into the league, to bring their capacity up to 4,000.

Solihull Moors

Their club has said that plans are in place at the formerly named Damson Park rugby ground to do just that; if so, it’s hoped that the seating arrangements will be rather more permanent than the oddly appointed temporary stands currently in place.

Good away following from the Blues

Round the league it looks like the bottom 2 of Braintree and Maidstone might be set adrift and be odds on to go down, but at the top only Wrexham won at the weekend and Solihull could only draw at home to Barnet. It’s still up for grabs as to who will emerge champions in May, but right now Chesterfield have nothing to fear from any of these sides, we play Harrogate next at home then it’s Barnet and Wrexham away. A few weeks ago, Spireites were wondering if we’d get any results in this current run of fixtures, now it looks like a case of hoping we don’t drop any points against beatable teams.

www.chesterfield-fc.co.uk
Fylde website

Scott comes back to save Chesterfield

Chesterfield are out of the drop zone for the first time since Boxing Day, 1-0 at home to Halifax may not seem much but it was a huge result, but the most important thing is that with Scott Boden returning to Chesterfield we do actually look like scoring.


 His movement off the ball is something we’ve not seen from any of our strikers all season, in this division he looks like a complete player with a scoring record of 12 goals in 30 matches for Gateshead and now Chesterfield.

Of the other players making their debuts Josef Yarney looked comfortable in a back 3 and Ellis Chapman certainly had a good first half and proved that can take on the full back and put in a cross, which is something we have been badly missing all season. John Sheridan mentioned in his post-match interview that he’d shouted at Lee Shaw just to take one touch on the ball and get the ball into the box. Having taken this on board, Chesterfield immediately got their penalty from the next cross that came into the area.

 John Sheridan has proven himself in management, getting players to do the simple things well and cut out the mistakes. He also commented in his interview that he doesn’t need players to run 10 or 20 miles per match if they can’t keep hold of the ball, as we didn’t look like losing to Halifax but at times in the game, we were watching two sides kicking the ball at each other rather than playing to any recognised plan.

Also of note is the fact the Marc Antoine Fortune seems to be instructed to turn with the ball and try to get a shot off, which nearly paid dividends at the end of the first half with the ball going agonisingly wide. For many, a formerly high-profile player like Fortune ought to offer more to the side than simply playing with his back to goal and trying to feed the ball to others, he should score more goals. I know he's never been prolific in his career, but he should get more shots at goal per game.

Round the division, Ebbsfleet got involved in more trouble, with 4 players being sent off against Solihull Moors, 2 from each side seeing red. One would hope that the National League might now ask questions about the conduct of the side from Kent

Next week we go to a motorway junction between Preston And Blackpool to play AFC Fylde, a side who we beat quite convincingly in the FA Cup 3-1 earlier in the season. The key to that victory was that Tom Denton played in the middle with Kiwomya and Shaw running either side of our him giving the home defence a torrid time. Here’s hoping for a similar result next Saturday.

Meanwhile at the final whistle some children supporting Halifax thought it would be a great idea to behave like football hooligans and decided to throw a flare onto the pitch and also launch a firework. The flare landed near a disabled fan, but luckily there were no reported injuries. The Police did make arrests.

 A statement from FC Halifax says;
"We’re appalled at today’s incident involving one of our disabled fans and a flare from our OWN supporters. We’ll be investigating this matter and requesting all ground CCTV from Chesterfield. Behaviour such as this will not be tolerated."


https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/sport/football/chesterfield-fc/match-report-ice-cool-boden-earns-chesterfield-vital-win-over-fc-halifax-town-1-9585682

Top Tuneage and transfers at The Proact.

We don't have a transfer window in this division but John Sheridan's been wheeling and dealing and at least 3 new names on the team sheet should brighten things up and get us away from the drop to oblivion. 

Gateshead finally parted with Scott Boden to bring him back the Chesterfield, our former understudy to Jack Lester has a goal tally of one in every three games in this league and that's what we really need to get wins on the board. 

Louis Dodds has come back from his loan spell at Port Vale although he’s not really made much impact at Vale Park in his second spell there starting only 6 games and usually being a substitute, whether he can make the difference up front for Chesterfield remains to be seen, as he has a career record of one goal every 5.7 matches.

Striker Jack McKay is set to move on loan from Cardiff to the Proact, it wont be a long term move but anyone who has played 10 times in the Premier should be looking to bag a few goals for the Blues, Josef Yarney comes in from Newcastle and rumours were abound that we may have a new left back soon. Phew!

As for last week it's a big shout out to whoever plays the tunes before and during the games at the Proact, National League fans were impressed with our tannoy selection of the Alarm, the Jam, The Skids, Killing Joke, AC/DC, Orbital, Blur and many more favourites. Just stay away from the boy bands and most fans will be fine with that although a little Northern Soul wouldn't go amiss.

Saturday’s home game was one of those “nearly” matches we nearly scored early on with two great chances, which should have been put away. We nearly lost it second half when Barrow put on a bit of pressure and nearly scored one second half after what was a crazy game of head tennis in front of the Barrow goal. Although we really should have had a penalty when the Barrow keeper Joel Dixon blatantly pulled down Curtis Weston in the box.

In truth though there were too many mis placed passed by both teams and Chesterfield are obviously in real need of a striker who can partner Denton or Fortune. John Sheridan’s 4-1-4-1 line up has had the desired effect of not conceding a goal in 3 matches and we can hopefully banish memories of recent defensive disasters against the likes of Solihull Moors and Ebbsfleet and look forward to watching a team who are hard to beat and can pressure the opposition. The majority of our drawn games this season have come from conceding the first goal and then having to play to catch up with a squad that has previously found it difficult to score more than one goal a game.

With 7 wins roughly, required from 16 games to save us from the dreaded drop there’s an awful lot still to play for at the business end of the campaign, we do still have to play most of the teams around us. 

Anyone can put together a decent run to get out of it, a few weeks ago Dover looked dead and buried and most fans had them down as relegation certainties, however they now sit 2 places and three points above Chesterfield, they look to have turned things around in December and recently secured a morale boosting away win at Wrexham.

In other news Ebbsfleet players have some concerns revealing that their wages are hardly ever paid on time and are worried about pension payments, interesting times in Kent...

Defeat at Orient

I’m always wary when your manager says that we are going to win the next game, it’s usually a case of coming down to Earth with a bump and so it proved at Leyton Orient. The thing was, in the press box most of the Orient commentary team thought that Chesterfield were the best opponents they had seen at Brisbane Road, however since we were defeated it’s probably worth sticking your money on the O’s to go up.

Getting vertigo on the camera gantry at Brisbane Road

In effect Chesterfield ‘s demise mirrors that of Leyton Orient only we appear to be a season or so behind them, when they dropped out of the league due to having an eccentric Italian owner who kept on sacking the manager, they found it a real struggle in their first season in the National League. Slowly under Justin Edinburgh they have turned things around and now sit pretty on top of the table by playing some half decent football, unlike the majority of the sides in this division, although agreement in the press box was unanimously that there isn’t a single team that you’d call a consistently good side in the National League.

At Orient the new stand certainly is impressive

On the pitch, I personally though Chesterfield made things too easy for Orient at the start of the game not putting in enough tackles and making it alarmingly simple for the home side to go through our midfield and score before ten minutes were on the clock. Once Martin Allen made a tactical switch and put Alex Kiwomya on the right, Chesterfield suddenly looked the better side and scored an excellent goal.  The key moment for me was once Kiwomya went off with a hamstring problem Chesterfield stopped moving the ball as well as they had done and Orient took the initiative. The home side’s second goal came from a corner that was never cleared properly, even though the opportunity to put the ball out of play was missed by the Blues a good Orient cross still could have been defended, but slackness cost us and the game was effectively sealed at 2-1 to the home side. Despite some controversy, for my money the third goal was a correct penalty decision, although needlessly conceded by Joe Rowley.

So, onto the Christmas fixtures where Chesterfield must gain wins to take us away from the dreaded drop, in a throwback to times past, we play the same side Solihull Moors twice in 6 days home and away sandwiching in a fixture against Hartlepool. Solihull are 6^th in the National League and put up a very good televised display against Blackpool in the FA Cup, it pains me to say it, but they won’t be easy fixtures especially with our ever-growing injury list.

Chesterfield faithful queue up to get in the old stand