Danny Webb on “resilient” and “determined” performance from Spireites in hard-fought Woking win

Danny Webb said that Chesterfield’s 2-0 win over Woking highlighted the resilience of the squad - bouncing back after a disappointing loss away at Southend at the weekend.

“It’s hard when you’re having a great season and you have one poor performance and result - it does feel like you’ve completely come off the horse.

“I think that tonight showed the resilience of the players. They were determined not to concede, which was great. Sometimes, with the way we play, it could be easy to mistake us for a team that just wants to be nice on the eye.

“This season, part of our success has been grinding out those clean sheets. That wasn’t the case earlier in the season and the boys got a lot of criticism for conceding some goals.

“Sometimes it takes time to gel - not necessarily as a team, but just to get the right formula for when you have the ball or don’t have the ball, at home or away from home - and sometimes that’s for the players to work out on the pitch.

“After that disappointing result on Saturday, with a few hundred more fans coming down, it was lovely to repay the supporters again tonight.”

Webb said that the coaching staff had made a conscious decision to bring in Freckleton and Sheckleford to combat Woking’s approach - and that both players had excelled despite not always playing regularly.

“They had a lot of corners and long balls, and we defended them. 50/50 tackles - our flair players were putting a foot in and coming out with the ball.

“We just went for that really strong back four defensively. That’s not a criticism of Horton, Mandeville or Jeff King - we just looked at those lads and thought the first thing on their CV is defensive.

“We put four out and out defenders there - but Sheckleford and Freckleton gave so much going forward. It’s so nice for them to get a little bit of credit and praise tonight.”

Webb confirmed that Mike Jones will miss two games after picking up his tenth yellow card of the season in the closing stages of the game. He added that the focus would now switch to Saturday’s game - with another difficult test for Chesterfield’s backline expected.

“We’re eight points clear - and hopefully Oldham do us a favour tomorrow.

“Everyone will be off tomorrow, then the preparation begins for playing the top scorer in the league in Paul McCullum, who we know very well, and Scott Quigley - which is going to be a really tough centre forward pairing to deal with.”