Five big talking points from Chesterfield's narrow win against Yeovil Town

Six up for Dents

It was a scrappy game and it was always going to be decided by a moment of quality or a mistake. Chesterfield’s 69th minute winner contained both. Yeovil’s Albi Skendi gave the ball away on the edge of his own box and substitute Luke Rawson seized the opportunity with a nice pass to Denton who cut inside his marker and showed great composure to finish for his sixth league goal in as many games. David Buchanan described Denton’s skill as ‘absolute chopsville’, while Kyle Letheren said he sent Yeovil’s centre-back ‘for fish and chips’. Only Maidenhead’s Sam Barratt is above Denton in the National League scoring charts (7 in 7). Dents finished last season with four goals in his last five games so his red-hot form this campaign takes him to 10 goals in his last 11 league outings for Town.

Shaping up

Manager John Pemberton has changed his system slightly in the last two games and it has worked well. Chesterfield started the season playing 3-5-2 but at Huish Park they set up in a 3-1-4-2 system with Milan Butterfield sitting just in front of Town’s defence. Having some extra pace in Alex Kiwomya and Nathan Tyson has allowed Pemberton’s men to stretch the play and you can see they are trying to be better in possession. In the opening minutes on Saturday, Jonathan Smith played out wide to give some protection to Jamie Sharman in case the hosts targeted him. After Sharman settled into the game, Smith went back into the middle of midfield and swapped with the more attack-minded Kiwomya. Credit must go to Pemberton for his tactics in the last two matches because he has got it spot on.

Different mentality

It is early days but the Spireites have shown some metal in the final stages of games in the last couple of weeks. Yeovil huffed and puffed at the end but the Blues managed the final minutes well to record a clean sheet. In his post-match interview Pemberton said it was a game they had to win and praised the character of his team for the way they ground out the victory.

Super sub Luke

Of course Rawson would rather be starting matches but that’s two matches this season he has helped change the game in Chesterfield’s favour. After his double off the bench against Woking, the youngster was a real livewire on Saturday and assisted Denton for his goal. There were a couple of other good moments as well and it shows how highly Pemberton rates him as he is keeping Scott Boden out of the squad.

Competition for places

With everyone fit apart from Luke Coddington and now Jordan Cropper, Chesterfield do have competition for places which has not been the case for a few seasons. Pemberton left Boden, Joe Rowley and Regan Hutchinson out of the matchday squad for the trip to Somerset, while Josef Yarney missed out through suspension. Everybody knows they are not guaranteed a starting spot and it bodes well going forward.