What pleased John Pemberton most about Chesterfield's performance in draw against Dover Athletic

The Blues could not hold on for all three points after Tom Denton’s 80th minute penalty was cancelled out by Nassim L’Ghoul’s strike nine minutes later.

The pre-match was dominated by the coronavirus outbreak and whether the game would go ahead.

Pemberton said they only found out at 10.30am on Saturday that it was definitely going to happen so to overcome that uncertainty was pleasing for him.

“I felt we deserved it (the win) today,” he said.

“In the first-half their goalkeeper has had to make three or four decent saves.

“Shwan (Jalal) has probably had one save to make the whole game.

“I am disappointed not to get the three points but I am not too disappointed with the performance.

“I thought the performance was good with everything that has gone off yesterday and this morning. I think it is a good point in the end.”

It was a solid all-round performance from the Blues who looked dangerous on the counter-attack but some slack defending allowed substitute L’Ghoul to equalise with just minutes remaining.

“The players almost want to pull each other apart in the dressing room after that game because we have conceded a goal and we should win a game where probably eight or nine weeks ago we were nowhere near winning a game so we have made massive strides,” Pemberton said.

When asked what pleased him most about the performance he added: “The resilience to everything that has gone off. The journey, the fiasco of everything whether it (the match) was on or off, coming out here and getting our heads around it and arguably being the better team which I think we were.”

Jamie Sharman replaced the ill Haydn Hollis and put in an impressive performance.

“He was top draw,” Pemberton said. “He was excellent today. I know what he is - calm under pressure - arguably he was one of our best players.”