John Sheridan reveals the biggest problem facing his Chesterfield side at the moment

The Spireites boss is all about possession and not terribly interested in data that reveals the distances players cover.

“We get the analysis, what they run in training, but you know what I only worry about the ball, me,” he said.

“All that fitness stuff doesn’t tell me how many times they gave the ball away.

“You look the fittest player on the pitch if you’re never giving the ball away, because you don’t have to chase it.

“We’ve got some unbelievable lads who are going to give me desire and energy.

“But I want people who can take care of the ball.”

While he believes the National League is quite forgiving when you make mistakes, Sheridan says the Spireites will be punished eventually if they don’t improve.

“That’s our biggest problem at the moment.

“We do it in patches, we’ve done it in games, Fylde away, Aldershot we did it for 10 or 15 minutes.

“But we need to do it for 35, 40 minutes, 60 minutes and we’ll be a miles better team and win a lot more games.

“We can’t keep giving the ball away, you’ll get punished.

“Luckily you get away with a lot of things in this league, but if you keep doing it you will eventually get punished.”

His assistant Glynn Snodin is of the opinion that they won’t have to work as hard, if they’re better on the ball.

“There’s no issues whatsoever with the work rate of these lads, off the ball they give you everything they’ve got,” he said.

“The work rate is different class.

“You don’t even have to talk about that with them. It’s just about a bit more cuteness, a bit more cleverness, especially in the last third.

“If we can keep the ball better they’ll save running probably, as a team, two miles per game.

“They’re doing too much running when they don’t have to, running 70, 80 yards back and if they keep the ball better they might be only running 10 yards.”