Chesterfield first-team coach Kieron Dyer sat down with the press on Friday morning to preview the away fixture against Crawley Town on Saturday afternoon.
Beginning with the pleasing 1-0 win over Gillingham in midweek, he said: “In a game of football over 90 minutes, it’s hard to dominate the whole game. The opposition are going to have spells and Gillingham started both halves extremely well. Had loads of long throws, had loads of set-pieces and they piled on the pressure.
“We didn’t succumb to that pressure, which was really pleasing. We defended, every man on the pitch defended really well, did their jobs and responsibilities and that helped us get the three points.
“It was Armando Dobra’s first start for a while. He’s been out for a long time. Liam Mandeville, we call him the Duracell bunny, but he was really low on energy. Dilan Markanday took a kick and was low on energy, so our changes really helped us. There were really three positive changes, so where we probably got the shape and the subs wrong on on the Saturday, we got our subs spot on, on Tuesday.”
Dyer then commented on Sammy Braybrooke’s performance.
“(He’s) a special player,” he said. “He was on our radar last season. Fair play to Neill Hornby, head of recruitment. After we played Newport at home and we won 4-1, what stuck out to me that day was how brave he was, even though they were 4 -1 down, he always wanted the ball, he very rarely gave the ball away.
“I watched a lot of the Newport games, I probably watched about nine Newport games, and every game I watched for Newport he was the best player on the pitch, and this is a team that were bottom of the league. He was fantastic, he’s brave, he’s slight, but getting second balls, getting pressure on the ball, he does that very well and he’s a special talent.
Lastly, focusing on Crawley, he added: “Obviously the league doesn’t lie, but from a performance point of view Crawley are a lot better than where their league position shows. I’d probably say between both 18-yard boxes they’re probably one of the better teams in the league.
“We’ve got to be on it. We’re going to have to have loads of energy. I know it’s a three-game week. They try to dominate the ball. They have great patterns. They’ve got Ronan Darcy and Klaidi Lolos, who are great 10s. They can be a threat.
“We know all about Ronan, so we have to be at it. We have to be really good. Obviously, we want to be brilliant with the ball to win the game, but we’ve got to be brilliant without the ball as well. Like I said, they are very good at what they do, so we have to stop that and assert ourselves on the game.”
Watch the full interview on the club’s YouTube channel.
