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GRAHAM ALEXANDER’s changes paid off for out-ofform Salford City to ensure their Football League dream remains on track.
Carl Piergianni won a scrappy and low-quality affair with his first-half header as the Ammies avoided an unthinkable fifth consecutive defeat.
A difficult few weeks had seem them slip out of the title race, and almost the play-off places, but boss Alexander produced the right answers with five changes to his team.
“We just looked at our recent results, not our performances, but our results,” he explained. “We’ve lost games for a certain reason and we felt we had to try and negate that reason, try and be a bit physically stronger, more competitive.
“We’ve been looking for the style of play, the passing patterns, the goalscoring opportunities, we’ve possibly overlooked the basics of English football, that’s being a competitive individual and a competitive team.
“We’ve emphasised that this week, the players have taken it on board and what you saw out there was a competitive team working their socks off to win a game of football.”
For the amount of individual talent in both sides, the game lacked quality throughout, aside from the set-piece delivery of the visitors.
Devonte Redmond’s cross from a free-kick created the first chance for Salford as Nathan Pond headed wide when he should have done better.
Injury-hit Ebbsfleet could name only four substitutes, three being academy youngsters, but caused their own problems on the pitch although fussy referee Andrew Miller didn’t help matters.
Makeshift left-back Myles Weston gave away possession on the edge of his own area to Matt Green and goalkeeper Nathan Ashmore had to sprawl superbly to his right to keep out his effort.
Salford’s back three of Hogan, Pond and Piergianni were superb in dealing with the Ebbsfleet long ball aimed at the intimidating duo of Michael Cheek and Danny Kedwell.
Their midfield won every battle too – Mafuta, Maynard and Redmond outnumbering and out-scrapping the classy pairing of Jack Payne and Andy Drury.
Salford broke the deadlock through Piergianni just after the half hour with a well-worked corner routine.
Touray’s out-swinging delivery from the left was met on the volley by captain Hogan, who had freed
himself at the far post, turning the ball back into the six-yard box for his defensive partner to nod in.
Pond then headed against the outside of a post in injury-time from another set piece.
Ashmore twice denied Green in the second half while Ebbsfleet couldn’t muster a shot on target, going close only when Weston’s free-kick dropped onto the roof of the net.
A frustrating afternoon was compounded when Drury was shown a straight red card after the full-time whistle for his complaints towards the referee.
“I was three yards from Andy Drury and the referee has said he has sent him off for foul and abusive language,” explained manager Garry Hill. “There was no way he was doing that, he was saying about the inconsistencies.
I’m sure over the next half an hour when the referee is in there with his assistants they’ll have a cup of tea together and come up with some story. I have no complaints with the result.”