St Neots boss hails his side

19 Feb 2018 By David Simpson

Difficult month

Matt Clements said he has been impressed by the way that his squad have handled a tricky month after their 1-0 win over Tiverton in the Evo-Stik Southern, Premier Division.

The Saints have not only surpassed last year’s total with but also secured their first league double of the season over play-off chasing Town and their fourth win in five matches.

It’s a feat all the more impressive considering they’ve played the likes of play-off hopefuls Chesham in the last few weeks, while also being hit by injury and suspension.

“It was a bit of an achievement hitting 50 points and it’s a positive but the main thing is that it was another really good performance,” Clements said.

“We looked at this month and we’ve saw we had Weymouth, Tiverton and Chesham - all teams that are looking at the play-offs or trying to win the league so to come out with two wins and a loss is a good thing.

“We’ve had a couple of players injured and a couple suspended which is a shame but we had a good 11. We bought in a couple of youngsters from the reserves and recalled a loan as well.

“We have just got a good squad – the mentality is there and it has been for the last five or six weeks, the lads have really bought into it here.

“We’ve spoken in the past about silly mistakes costing us games but we seem to have stopped that. I’m not saying we’re not going to lose games but that’s not because of naivety any more.”

The first chances of the game fell to Dylan Williams who narrowly put two efforts just wide of the woodwork, while Jack Bradshaw and David Bridges also had shots saved by visiting keeper Alexis Andre.

They finally made their breakthrough after 26 minutes though when Tom Wood got on the end of a perfectly weighted cross to make it 1-0.

They had the ball in the net again just 10 minutes later when Nabil Shariff managed to get something of Williams’s cross, for the referee to rule it out for a push in the build-up.

Things got worse two minutes into half time when Lewis Irwin scored following Stefan Broccoli’s neat pass – for the linesman to raise his flag for offside, meaning that the Saints went in just one goal to the good.

Match Highlights St Neots V Tiverton Town