Macc in great place ahead of Trophy semi-final

the year, it might be something as little as that that can win you a game.

“We plan really well as a group and we respect every opponent we play, we give the lads videos to watch so I think we need to give it everything.

“We’re entertaining a lot more fans now than we used to and we hope they’re enjoying it.”

After picking up a number of injuries in previous weeks, the back-line required reshaping after Brandon Lee and Joe Hilton had concluded the Ashton United game injured.

As a result, Drew Baker shifted across to centre-half, Neil Kengni started in his unnatural position at full-back and newest recruit Ollie Byrne made his debut between the sticks.

“When we’re at home we’re going to go for the throw, if we’re away from home we probably would’ve stuck with Drew [Baker] and left-back and Laff [Dan Lafferty] at centre-half and been a bit more solid.

“But at home we’ve got paying fans and we need to entertain them and we want to beat teams, we want to score goals, we want to be fast, we want to be attacking so if that’s the philosophy we’re sticking to then we probably had no other option than to do what we did.

“Keng [Neil Kengni] has done really well and massive shoutout to Ollie [Byrne] on his debut I thought it looked like he’d been here for years.

“The way he commands his box, he’s lively in the changing room and to be honest it’s probably something we’ve been missing.

“He’s really loud on the pitch and commanding and I thought he was fantastic.”

Clegg made it clear how pleased he was for Mendy to claim a goal on his return from injury and is another player who has been rotating in-and-out of the back-line this season, proving his quality from both defence and midfield.

The number 7 connected with Paul Dawson’s headed ball into the centre with a volley that flew into the roof of the net, far out of the reach of George Murray-Jones.

“I’m buzzing”, said Clegg. “He’s come in and he’s had a niggle so we had a good chat a week or two ago about what I expect from my captain and since then he’s just grew.

“What the lads don’t get enough credit for is that we’ve just played three games without 44 goals in the team in Alex Curran and John

Rooney. With it being Macc and us winning all three of them games people won’t really speak about it but taking that amount of goals and talent out of your team, it could’ve affected us but the lads have seamlessly just got on with it.

“It’s dead pleasing, momentum’s building, it’s [the] business end of the season and we’re just up for it at the moment and it’s great to see.”