John Coleman rated Accrington’s performance at Salford highly

Posted Sunday, August 27, 2023 by PA

John Coleman believes that his Accrington team turned in their best performance of the season in a 2-1 win over Salford at the Peninsula Stadium.

Shaun Whalley and Josh Andrews were on target in the first half before Ryan Watson added a consolation from the spot for the hosts late on.

It was a display that certainly filled the Stanley manager with pride, with his side taking 10 points from their opening five games.

Coleman said: “I think that’s the best we’ve played. We had a set plan that we were going to sit in second half but we didn’t. In the second half, we should have scored another couple but didn’t.

“A nervy couple of minutes when they got the penalty but the lads have seen it out.

“I can’t fault anybody, there were some big performances in there and we should have got that third.

“That game plan was a long time in the making and we come up with a game plan that we practiced in training.

“We were going to try and stifle them and force them into areas that favoured us and consequently it worked because we took the ball off them in dangerous areas.

“When we do that we’re really good because we counter really well and we did that today, made numerous chances, and thankfully a couple went in.”

Salford went into half-time 2-0 down and when their frustrations continued in the second half, it forced Neil Wood to reshuffle his pack.

Stevie Mallan and Matthew Lund both made way for Watson and Ossama Ashley in a double substitution in midfield.

Attackers Connor McLennan and Marcus Dackers then came on for Conor McAleny and Theo Vassell as Salford went more direct.

Ammies head coach Wood said: “Slow start, we were poor for 25 minutes. We gifted two goals away from our point of view which is disappointing because we spoke about that a lot during the week.

“I think if we’d have started the game like we finished it we’d have been OK.

“We played a lot of backward passes in the first half, bringing pressure on ourselves and we didn’t need to do that.

“Second half we were much better but we can’t keep doing that for the first 25 minutes.

“We had two strikers on the pitch and the press was there for us to play over and we created chances and caused problems with that. If it needed to be a bit more direct then it was causing problems.

“I thought we were too negative and didn’t see forward passes enough and weren’t brave enough to play forward in the opening 25 minutes.”