Davies delighted by Rebels’ desire to beat Hemel and extend run at home

Slough Town 2, Hemel Hempstead Town 0

Scott Davies praised the desire of his players as they outworked Hemel Hempstead Town for a 2-0 win at Arbour Park on Tuesday night.

Having been pegged back late on in Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Farnborough, the Rebels got back to winning ways thanks to goals either side of half-time from Nathan Minhas and Johnny Goddard.

The result lifts them three points clear of the bottom four and up to 18th in the table with at least two matches in hand on all the sides currently in the drop zone.

The Rebels were without Josh Jackman for Tuesday’s game while Dan Bayliss was named as a substitute alongside new signing Slavi Spasov.

Despite those changes in defence, the Rebels settled into the game quite nicely, with Minhas forcing the first save of the match in the sixth minute.

Slough continued to move the ball around nicely, working the ball well to their opponents’ box without forcing any telling chances until later in the half. Chances were at a premium as the teams cancelled each other out defensively.

The breakthrough came four minutes before the half-time whistle when Goddard’s curling effort was spilled by the Hemel keeper and Minhas reacted first to bag himself a poacher’s goal.

The home side came close to doubling their advantage in the 53rd minute when Jeanmal Prosper headed another ball in from Goddard just wide, but the Rebels’ play was deserving of a second goal, and it arrived shortly before the hour mark.

Again, Minhas was involved as he held the ball up and laid it into the path of Goddard who rolled the ball beyond King and into the bottom righthand corner.

The Vanarama player of the month for November has been in fine goalscoring form of late and this strike just took the game away from the visitors with half an hour to play.

Hemel, to their credit, never threw in the towel, and only a super stop from Dan Lincoln prevented Josh Williams from halving the deficit in the 75th minute.

Davies and his assistant Tony Fontenelle made a double substitution in the 86th with Slavi Spasov replacing Mikel Platt to make his debut and Daniel Bayliss coming on for Tyrese Dyce.

The game appeared to be drifting towards a routine conclusion when a bizarre turn of events in stoppage time led to Fontenelle being shown a red card on the sidelines.