'˜When we pass we do it with a purpose'

The Spireites top the League Two table for passes made this season, with Louis Reed having attempted the most passes of any player in the division.

And fellow Town midfielder Connor Dimaio is listed as the league’s most accurate passer of the ball.

Chesterfield’s assistant manager says they have to keep the ball on the deck because of the make-up of the squad.

“If people haven’t watched us they’ll probably look at us at the bottom of the league and think it doesn’t matter how much possession you have it’s what you do with it,” he said.

“For this group of players we’ve got, we can’t go back to front, we can’t smash it up for flick ons because we can’t do it, we haven’t got the players.

“The players we have got are good technical footballers.

“All we’ve tried to do is get them passing with a purpose. We don’t just want to keep possession, we want to keep possession to hurt teams, to penetrate, create chances and score goals.

“It sounds pretty basic but over the past few years you’ve had your Barcelonas with their Tiki-taka and there were a lot of teams out there playing pure possession, turning down the opportunity to shoot or cross just so they could keep the ball.

“I’d never go to that extent.

“A lot of teams now are going away from that, especially at League Two level. If we get sucked into a battle with the majority of teams in League Two we’ll come off second best, so we have to go about it a different way and that’s by keeping the ball.”

Eaden admits he’s not much of a statto because the numbers can be deceiving.

He trusts what he sees with his own eyes and what he sees in Louis Reed is a player who makings things happen when he passes the ball.

“I don’t really get concerned with stats because they can hide a lot of things,” said Eaden.

“I’ve worked at academies where players will wave stats at you like 95 or 96 per cent pass completion and 90 per cent of them have gone no where or back to the keeper.

“It’s what I see. People like Reedy, he’s creating things and putting the ball into areas, as our all the players.

“They’ve really taken on board what we’ve asked them to do.”