Assistant manager Gav Skelton gave us his reaction to the away draw at Chorley on Tuesday night.
“We knew it would be a tough test coming here,” he said. “They had a good season last year, they’ll be expecting or wanting to do as well or better.
“I don’t think we can have many complaints about the result. Winning’s a good habit, unfortunately we didn’t do that, and from our performance perhaps didn’t deserve to win the game.
“But 90 minutes and for a lot of the lads it’s the first time they’ve got that for a long time, so that’s the most pleasing thing.
“There were some good things in it, a couple of players did themselves no harm, and some probably didn’t perform at the level they’d have liked.”
“As we keep saying, the 90 minutes is the most vital thing for them,” he continued. “Not a lot of them have had full games, so they’re better for that under their belts and they’ll definitely benefit from it.
“They’re still training hard at the moment, they trained hard yesterday [Monday], unfortunately some of the play was a little bit sloppy, but there was some pleasing stuff as well.”
The first-half goal from Jayden Harris was an example of the quality that can change games and create opportunities.
“It just shows you, when we had that quality, which we have – and perhaps didn’t show it enough – we cut them open,” he agreed.
“It was a great ball from Taylor Charters and a great finish from Jayden. To be fair to Jay I thought he made some really good forward runs, especially in the first half.
“He’s got that in his locker and he wants to show us more of that this season than he got the opportunity to do last season.
“You could see why he needed the minutes, because second half he did tire, which is natural. In the first half he did cause them problems with his positive runs.
“He’s a good, physical athlete and he’s tidying his game up. He’s been working on parts of his game and it’ll be interesting to see how he goes this season.”
Chorley upped the tempo after the break with United wayward in their possession at key moments.
“Sometimes you cause your own problems,” he told us. “The gaps from back to front were too much and we gave it away sloppily at times, which is disappointing. But that’s going to happen in pre-season, no qualms about that.
“Was it a top level performance? No. Were the lads committed and did they work hard, yes. Did we get the quality we wanted at times? No.
“That reminds us that we’ve got a lot of work to do. We know that. It was always the plan in the last two games to get the 90 minutes into them, they needed that, you could see that, and it’s probably going back into last year the last time some of them got 90 minutes.
“It’s important they did it. It wasn’t free-flowing, we can’t deny that. But in terms of game time it was important. The minutes are building up for all of the players, that was the plan, so in that sense it’s been a pleasing week so far.”
And it wouldn’t be a summer friendly post-match interview without the obligatory update on potential signings.
“The work is ongoing,” he said. “I keep repeating it, today you think you’re close to something, very close, and it doesn’t quite happen, then something else comes back on.
“We’re hoping we’re going to have a really good day soon and everything’s going to fall in place and we’ll have some good news for you.
“Obviously one area we’re looking at is up front. There’s no denying it. You want to have plenty in that area.
“We’ve got bodies in that area, which is good, but to aid them and help them and give us more options, that’s an area we’re looking at.”
