Chesterfield camp make honest admission on what they got 'wrong'

Chesterfield led 1-0 but were reduced to 10-men after an hour when Lee Bonis was sent off. Before the sending-off they had an abundance of attacking talent ready to come off the bench but their plans were scuppered when Bonis was given his marching orders. Instead, they opted to go to five at the back to try and see out the game but the visitors equalised with six minutes remaining.

But, fast forward a few days to the Gillingham match with Town again 1-0 in front but perhaps tiring, they brought on Tom Naylor, Dylan Duffy and James Berry and that helped them secure a much-needed and hard-fought victory.

Kieron Dyer said: “After the Harrogate game, the manager and the coaches did a lot of reflecting and we probably thought that when we went down to 10-men, the subs that we put on and the change in shape to the five (was wrong). The reason why we did that was because Harrogate did not have a chance in the whole game and we just thought if we shut up shop we would see out the game. Unfortunately, they did get a chance and they punished us.

"So, roll on to Tuesday, we started the second-half pretty slow, we lacked energy. It was Dobs’ first start, he has been out for a long time. Mandy, we call him the Duracell Bunny, but he was really low on energy. Dilan Markanday took a kick and he was low on energy. So our changes really helped us, they were three really positive changes. So where we got the shape and the subs wrong on the Saturday, we got our subs spot on on Tuesday.

"As they came on, they had an immediate impact, the game swung in our favour and we had a few chances to wrap up the game and we definitely should have had a penalty so that was really pleasing from our point of view.”

The midweek win meant Chesterfield jumped up to two places to sixth in the League Two table, extending their unbeaten run to five, ahead of this Saturday’s trip to Crawley Town.