John Sheridan urges Chesterfield fans to stay positive despite opening day loss

The Spireites were beaten 2-1 by Dover Athletic at the Proact Stadium on Saturday and following the result, some fans voiced their concerns about the team on social media, after an opening-day defeat.

Sheridan, though, sent out of a statement of intent to those supporters and has asked them to stick by the team.

Speaking ahead of the Spireites’ game against Maidenhead, he said: “I wouldn’t be concerned, it’s one game. They won the first three games last year. I think they know what I’m like anyway, the majority of them.

“They know I don’t like getting beat, especially in the first game. They know I want to get off to a good start. First game of the season, you get beat, it’s not good. We were at home, I wanted to get off to a good start but I’ve been at clubs where we’ve had a bad start and six or seven games later, you’re in the play-offs.

“You can easily go on a run of winning four or five games, things can turn around so quickly. I think a lot of teams are going to beat each other this season, it’s going to be so evenly matched.

“A lot of teams will take a lot of points from one another this season. We’ve got to concentrate to make sure we’re up and around those promotion areas if we can, from the first month of the season to the last and hopefully we can be there in the mix.”

Chesterfield were backed by a huge home crowd of over 4,000 on Saturday.

That attendance rivals a lot of League One and Two clubs and Sheridan was quick to thank the fans for their support on Saturday.

“Yeah, I was happy. I thought the fans were excellent,” he explained.

“ It was a shame because you can see once the team started playing a little bit, you can see them get that belief because we’re creating chances.

“It was four-and-a-half thousand but it feels like a lot more. The fans probably feel how I’m feeling. We’re on a high and I’m thinking my team’s playing really well, we get the goal and we’re upbeat and then it all went flat at the same time.

“I totally understand where they’re coming from. For the last couple of seasons, they’ve watched a lot of losing football here. We need to start winning.”