Peters says the sky’s the limit for ruthless Magpies
Maidenhead United were back to their ‘ruthless’ best as an attacking outfit against Chesterfield on Saturday, and assistant boss Ryan Peters believes the sky is the limit for this squad of players.
The shackles of relegation have been removed from the Magpies’ ankles and in the players have responded to their manager's call last week not to let the season wither away and die.
The Magpies might be the only part-time team in the division, but they’ve assembled a squad capable of competing for a play-off spot this season and Peters is keen to see them grasp this opportunity.
On Saturday they brushed aside Chesterfield 2-0 with a dominant team display while on Tuesday night they produced another commanding display to see off Torquay United 4-1.
Reflecting on Saturday’s win over the Spirerites, Peters said: “This is an opposition that’s been in terrific form. I think they’ve won five of their last six games, so we knew it was going to be a tough ask. But we did well to get a 2-0 win and a clean sheet finally. We’ve been giving teams a head start in recent matches, which doesn’t help, but today we were a lot stronger defensively and scored two good goals.
“Our form and results of late have been a little bit indifferent, unfortunately, but today we got it just right. The performance was terrific, one of our best of the season, and we were ruthless going forward.
“The gaffer has laid down the gauntlet to the players by saying ‘let’s finish as high as we can’. We’re sitting in 15th place now, but we’ve got games in hand and with performances at the level it was today, we would hope to be able to jump up the table.”
Not only does Peters believe Maidenhead have the quality to compete for promotion this season, he also sees that the players have the right mentality to do it. He added he sees no reason why they shouldn’t be in and around the top seven come the end of the season.
This week’s results have lifted them to 10th in the table, a handful of points off the play-offs with games in hand on rivals.
“We’ve had a tail-off in performance and results recently, but hopefully we’re over that now,” he said. “We’ve got some tough teams to go up against, but we hope this is the turning point for a better end to the season.
“We’re trying not to put any pressure on the boys, but their mentality is strong. If performances are where they need to be then you would hope that results will follow. We’re trying to push as high as we can up the table, where that leads to, I don’t know, but the manner of the performance today and the goals we put away would suggest we can get close to those play-off places.”
Many names were in the frame for the side’s man-of-the-match on Saturday – most notably Ryan Upward, Nathan Blissett, James Comley, Rohan Ince, goalkeeper Taye Ashby-Hammond and Dan Sparkes – who many felt had his best game for the club in scoring and assisting. But Peters refused to be drawn on the matter, preferring instead to praise an excellent team performance.
“I try to shy away from speaking about who stood out,” said Peters, “Particularly when all 16 members of the match day squad pushed the team on. I’m not going to name any names, but I thought everyone was brilliant today and that’s the way it should be.”
Ryan Peters was feeling ‘over the moon’ after Maidenhead United’s convincing victory against Torquay United on Tuesday evening, a result he felt eclipsed the Magpies’ performance at Chesterfield.
United were able to utilise home advantage and fire four past their high-flying visitors with Nathan Blissett (two), Josh Coley, and Danilo Orsi-Dadomo all chalking their names onto the scoresheet, with Scott Boden netting for Torquay.
Having lost 2-1 to the Gulls earlier in the season, in which Shaun Donnellan scored the Magpies’ only goal, assistant manager Peters was self-satisfied with how his squad outdid their opponents in all departments this time.
“If you remember back to the start of the season when we played them, they destroyed us and were well worth their victory,” he said.
“To be able to do the same as what they did to us and score a few more goals than they did, I’m over the moon with that.
“We try to keep as many clean sheets as possible and we weren’t able to do it tonight
(Tuesday), but you can see we’ve got a defensive resilience about us now.
“It’s allowing us to go down the other end with Seth (Twumasi) and a few others who have managed to score or set up some goals.
“We weren’t sure how we were going to eclipse Saturday’s performance [against Chesterfield] but I think we have done just that,” added Peters.