Veteran Jamal is a hit on his debut
NEW signing Jamal Campbell-Ryce has been backed to be a ‘good acquisition’ for Chesterfield, after making an immediate impact on his debut.
The experienced winger’s loan move from Sheffield United only went through hours before the Spireites’ draw at Glanford Park, but within a minute of coming off the bench in the second half he had fired in his side’s equaliser.
It earned the visitors a battling point on the back of Paddy Madden’s 18thminute opener for Scunthorpe. It was a deserved one too and a reward for Chesterfield’s much-improved second-half display.
“The goal will have settled Campbell-Ryce down straight away – he’s going to be a good acquisition for us,” said Spireites boss Danny Wilson.
“I didn’t have to tell him to do anything. He’s an experienced boy – it wasn’t a difficult decision to throw him on. He knows what to go and the positions to take up.
“We encourage our wide players to get into positions at the back post and he did that naturally.
“First half we weren’t at the races at all, though in saying that, we weren’t really under a lot of pressure.
“Sometimes when you don’t get out of the blocks like you want to, you can see yourself going two or three goals down, but thankfully we kept it down to one.
“At half-time there were words exchanged and in the second half we came out, showed the true Chesterfield and controlled large parts.”
Scunthorpe controlled the opening 45 minutes, but had only Madden’s 20th goal of the season, finished coolly after he had beaten the offside trap and taken a couple of touches to round ‘keeper Tommy Lee, to show for their dominance.
After the break, a Chesterfield side who had played very deep and struggled for an outlet in the final third, took the game to their hosts.
Jay O’Shea flashed a firsttime shot across the face of goal from the edge of the box, before then doing well to take the ball to byline and pull it back into the middle for Campbell-Ryce to smash into the roof of the net from eight yards.
Scunthorpe boss Nick Daws said: “I think it was a game of thirds.We were really good in the first third and played some excellent football – but we didn’t create enough for our dominance.
“I was pleased with the way we moved the ball about up until the final third, but that’s where our quality needs to be a little bit better if we’re going to win football matches.
“We scored a fantastic goal, but for the remaining two thirds of the game we were well below our standards.”