United boss Chris Beech spoke to us about what he expects will be another tough game as the Blues head to the Peninsula Stadium this weekend.
“They’re a massive club with massive finance and great facility,” he said. “I’ve worked with Chris Casper the director of football 15-16-17 years ago when he first started out coaching Bury’s youth team. I took over his youth team at Bury.
“You’ve got Richie Wellens who’s won the league with Swindon, had his experience with Oldham, he probably looks at that as a negative one, but it was a good learning curve and he bounced back great and ends up winning League Two.
“You’ve got Warren Joyce with the Man United experience of bringing all those young players through. Then of course they’ve got quality professional football players that you can only look and admire them.”
“I helped recruit two of them at Rochdale, Ashley Eastham from Blackpool and Ian Henderson from Colchester,” he continued. “They’re outstanding professional football players that a club like Salford can support paying them at our level.
“It’s a different remit here but that doesn’t mean to say we can’t be competitive and play our way. We can respect them, we have to understand what we’re good at and have to do what we’re very good at to get something from a club who haven’t actually lost a game at home.”
On the resources available at the Peninsula Stadium, he commented: “There’s absolutely no envy from me looking at them, other than they’re in a position to be able to do it.
“It’s only like looking at your neighbour who’s got a nice, brand new car. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s just the way it is.
“Fair play, I think the ruling came out of the capping, it’s rescinded and it helps probably major decisions they would have had to make, because they have a budget to fit in to probably top end League One, currently in League Two, and it would be a right squeeze to try and squeeze that in if the cap was taking place. But, as we know, it looks like that’s changed now.”
On what type of game we can expect, he commented: “Salford are a very possession-based team. They have individuals that can win games.
“Ironically they beat our neighbours Barrow midweek on a mistake, a defensive mistake, passing the ball backwards, and people like Ian Henderson who are prepared to run and press, and have qualities of a high, technical footballer, will take advantage of any in they can get.
“He did the other day, so we’ve got to be wary of that, and they’ve got Ashley Eastham who was a big centre-half at Rochdale who we got from Blackpool, he’s captain of Salford and is another exemplary professional footballer.
“They’ve got others that support that. That’s just a normal character in their dressing room, it costs a lot of money to have that situation, but they’ve got it and are now using it to the best of their abilities.
“They’ve got that experience in the manager, have great support in Chris Casper the director of football, Warren Joyce and other staff members, and they’re in a good place to do great things.”
“To keep it simplified, we’ve got to look to respond to our last result, make sure that we’re hard to beat, make sure that we put pressure on the opponent and make it so they’re not comfortable in their comfort zone, which is not losing at home,” he concluded.
“If we do that really well we’ll have a chance. The offset of that, if that becomes a statistic, fantastic. If it doesn’t, we’re still on a plan to do what we need to do in the remaining games.”
