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MANAGER NOTES
MICHAEL DUNWELL
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Good afternoon and a warm welcome back to the MAP Group UK Stadium for this afternoon’s Northern League Division One match against Consett.
Winning breeds confidence and we’ve had three good wins in a row now, within the space of a week, three different wins really. It’s also been good to have two good training sessions this week, probably the first time we’ve been able to do that since the season started with all the games. It’s gave us a chance to work on things going into today’s game with Consett. I’m very pleased. We always knew that things we starting to change. We weren’t playing badly. We can say we’ve turned it around after a loss and a draw in the league and then the FA Cup defeat to Consett, but we didn’t play badly in those games, we just weren’t converting our chances when we got them. We’ve scored nine and conceded two goals in our last three games. It’s really pleasing and we always felt that this would happen with the quality that we’ve got in the team. We picked up three wins in a week, but now we’ve got three very tough games this next week with Consett, Hebburn Town and Shildon, so we’ll know better where we stand after that and we’ll have played 10 games by that point. We welcome Consett today and we’ve had a chance to work on things this week. We played them in the FA Cup and we were disappointed with the result because the performance was there. The clear-cut chances we had, we were just sloppy with our finishing and forward play. They’ve had two defeats, so will be wanting to put that right, but we are full of confidence and back ourselves. We’re just pleased with the way things are stockton_townfc
going, at the moment. We’re five points off the top and a point off third and we are aiming to close the gap further this next week. After the win against Northallerton, we faced Whitley Bay and I thought they started well, they pressed really high and it took us maybe 10 minutes to get into our stride, but once we did, they didn’t really trouble us. It might’ve taken a while to get the goal, but once we did, we went on to do really well and score the second. I don’t think the result was ever in doubt after we took the lead. We controlled and managed the game really well. Newcastle Benfield was the last game for the team and I think that it’s the first time in a little while that we’ve come from behind to win because we tend to score the first goal. When they did score, it can be a bit worrying close to half-time, but we responded straight away, within the space of a minute. It was a well-worked goal, which was finished off by Mikey (Roberts). He has started the season well, not just his goals, but his work-rate off the ball as well. Then Kev (Hayes) scored a wonder strike and he seems to be doing this more and more. Benfield is always a difficult place to go and it wasn’t the prettiest of performances, but it showed the other side to our game, where we can dig in deep and grind a win out.
