Local lad Owen Moxon has to be pinching himself with the way his summer move back to his boyhood club has gone so far, with his own chant from the terraces just one of the many plusses from an action-packed first half of the campaign.
Ten assists goes hand-in-hand with topping many of the stats charts for passes completed, tackles made - and a host of others; let’s not forget his recent fan voted player of the month award - with his set-piece threat also a major part of the United armoury.
Tuesday night saw him complete what has to be the pass of the season so far, when he released Joe Garner for his goal against Barrow, and that was just one of the topics we discussed when we sat down with him on Thursday morning.
“It was a very good game to play in,” he said. “I was chatting to Morgan yesterday and we were talking about how much of a difference an extra few thousand people can make.
“The ground looked packed and the atmosphere was brilliant. I think it shows in the way we perform, I know it’s a bit of a cliché saying they’re like a 12th man, but it definitely does give us a boost. It was a great performance from everyone and we sent the fans away happy.
“To be fair, we started the game well but then Barrow came into it a bit. The weather was difficult to play in. with the wind, and they had a spell which every team does.
“The fans stayed with us and we got the goal just before half time which helped us massively, then we were able to go and kick on in the second half. The fans played a massive part in that.”
“I think everyone enjoyed playing in the game, which you could see on the pitch,” he added. “We’re on a good run now, we got our three wins in a row, which we hadn’t managed to do, and now you can just see the confidence we’ve all got.
“We want to go and do really well this year and I think we showed that in the second half especially. We’ve shown in the last couple of games that we can do both sides of the game. The pitch at Rochdale was awful and made it a real scrap, but we came through it and showed we can do both sides.”
Having managed to skirt away from talking about his own form, we highlighted the ever-growing number of assists of which, it turns out, he is actually quite proud.
“I’m happy with my form at the moment,” he told us. “It means a lot to see the stats. I think every player wants to go and perform the best they can.
“At the start of the season I said I just wanted to play as many games as possible and I knew I could bring something to the team.
“Thankfully it’s shown, I could have had more or less assists, but thankfully the lads have been putting the chances away. I would like to add more, but as long as we keep winning that’s the main thing.
“There are lessons to learn along the way as well. I made the mistake against Hartlepool but I felt it was the right thing to do to get the ball down and try to get us playing.
“Things change in a matter of seconds and the pass got cut out, I’ll obviously learn from it, but I’ll do it again if I think it’s the right thing to do. I won’t make the mistake again, but I’ll always try to do it if I think it’s right.
“I’m not scared to keep trying things, when it does come off like the pass for Garns for his goal on Tuesday, it’s obviously good for the team. He did well to go on and finish it and has probably done me a favour because I get the assist for it.
“When I see the pass I’ll try it, sometimes it doesn’t come off, but when it does it can punish teams so I’ll keep trying them.
“For Omari’s goal at first I was thinking I’m just going to shoot. It was a tight angle and I spotted Omari in the corner of my eye and I knew he was in a better position to score.
“It would have been nice to score here, I haven’t done that yet, but the main thing is getting goals for the team and winning games.
“Omari has been on my back a bit because I haven’t squared it to him, so I was able to tell him to shut up now because I’ve given it to him and he’s scored! The main thing is the team scoring but I am dying to get a goal at Brunton Park because I’ve only scored in away games so far.”
As for the free kicks and corners ...
“I do pride myself on my set pieces and I beat myself up if they aren’t quite right, because I know we can be such a threat from them,” he explained. “We’ve got a few lads with brilliant quality to deliver them and we’ve got plenty waiting in the box to put them away.
“It’s annoying when I don’t get them right because I know we could score from them if I do, but I think overall they’ve been good, even though we all would like to score more goals from set pieces.
“I had a free kick on Tuesday which hit the wall which was close, but it would be nice to see one of those fly in as well.”
We have, in the past, seen players get distracted by transfer window rumours, but this particular midfielder made a point of waving away the social media posts that linked him with clubs from Wales, the Championship and north of the border.
“There were a lot of rumours but I’m contracted to the club until next summer, so my main focus is just going out and winning games and getting this club up to League One,” he insisted.
“I don’t listen to it until I hear anything different, it’s all just rumours and I just block it out. I just want to keep winning games and playing for this club, I’m just concentrating on that.”
And that was music to the ears for a group of fans who have really taken him to their hearts.
“It’s a bit surreal when the fans sing my song,” he admitted. “It’s very enjoyable but I don’t really know what to say on it, because it’s a bit mad.
“I backed myself to come in and do well and I’m thankful to the gaffer for bringing me in and giving me the chance to show I can do really well at this level.
“I just hope we can keep doing well until the end of the season so the fans are singing about us going up. The individual stuff is nice but we’re just taking things game by game, the main thing is us doing well as a team.
“The gaffer keeps saying it in his interviews and in the dressing room but we really are just focusing on one game at a time. We want to go on a good run, nobody wants to lose any games obviously, but we really want to keep winning.
“We picked up a lot of draws at the start of the season so we just want to keep winning now, and it feels like we can keep doing that. We’ve got a bit of confidence about us and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’ll keep taking it game by game and try to win as many as possible.”
And staying on the subject of the fans, he spoke once again about the difference they make.
“It’s massive, we’ve got 18 games left and we’re going to be giving it our all as a team, so it would be great if all the fans can get behind us as much as they have been,” he said.
“It helps us massively and we all commented on it after the other night. If we can keep getting those crowds and we keep performing it could set us up for a really good end to the season.
“I think our biggest performances this season have been away from home, and the support has been unbelievable again. But it's nice to put on a performance like Tuesday’s in front of all the home fans, the 9,000 who came. It's definitely up there and hopefully we sent them all home happy.
“We all just want to do well for them. If we did achieve something, well, I don't think you can think of many better feelings, to be honest.
“For me and the rest of the lads, I'm sure it would mean the world to everybody. But like everybody keeps saying, and Morgan said it the other day, people might think we're lying but we are just taking it game by game and not getting carried away.
“If we do that, we'll see where we are come the end of the season and hopefully for the club, the players and all the fans, especially, we're where we want to be.”
The next game on that path is the visit of Harrogate on Saturday.
“We went down there earlier in the season and drew after we hadn’t performed well, which is the sign of a good team,” he commented. “It should be a different story with them coming to us, and if we keep playing like we have been then there should be nothing stopping us.
“It will be a hard game, they’re a good side and they gave us a hard game when we went there. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing and hopefully the result will follow.
“We weren’t happy with what we did down there, but it might be what you look back on at the end of the season and say that was a point that got us to where we got to.
“Their form doesn’t really matter. They're going to come and make it very hard for us. We've got to make it as hard as possible for them. And we've just got to fully focus on trying to win this next game.
“It doesn’t matter who we're playing, we just want to win the next game and just focus on the one after that, once this one's dealt with.”
